Christmas Traditions

Santa Photos
We usually do this at the mall or the company Christmas party each year. I couldn't find the first Santa photo with Maggie, and Lincoln missed last years party. Looking forward to the photo op this year with four kiddies...


Waah! He's not the real Santa! 2008

Unimpressed 2010

Elf on the Shelf
I'm gonna hold off on setting up the Elf on the Shelf until Dec 1. It will mean less work finding new hiding places. We had a lot of fun with this last year and it was such a big deal driving across town to buy the last one in the city at Chapters Cole Indigo. Elf report from last year....

Operation Christmas Child
You might have heard of this huge operation created by Franklin Graham where all the Canadian kids in schools, churches, and community groups fill small decorated shoeboxes with toys and small gifts. These are collected at collection centers in major cities and sent to the main headquarters and distribution center in Calgary, Alberta where the boxes eventually make their way to schools, hospitals, and orphanages etc in all parts of the world including Europe, Africa, South America and Asia.  I've been doing this since it started when I was in high school. I collect shoe boxes and peruse the dollar store and Zellers etc for  random toys and small trinkets all year. The kids are old enough to do this with me, but I just haven't had the time to do this with them this year (because of the big move). I only made a mail in donation. Their school is still taking collections for another week so I'll see what I can come up with in the next few days.

Hand Crafted Christmas Cards

Stampin Up! Spotlight JOY

It's time to get cracking on the mass production of Christmas cards. I would've started weeks ago but we just had the big move. My stuff is all unpacked so I have no excuse for not getting started, other than having too much housework and napping too much. I suppose my focus has shifted this time around because of the new baby coming soon (two more weeks to go!) C'est la vie. People might be receiving cards that I made in previous years or from card swaps.


Lighted Christmas Tree
This is the original Christmas Tree my husband's family had used since their early days in Canada.  We've decorated the tree with the homemade ornaments he and his brother created, plus a few new ones that the kids and I have made as well.  If you look carefully you'll see the Seven Dwarfs. Anywayz the tree is sometimes hard to balance because the stand is a little bit hard to assemble. We can't quite part with it, but this year because of the big move, the tree was shipped ahead of time to his brother's place so maybe this will be their tree this year and we'll use the super cool pre-lighted Fiber Optic tree I bought for my mother in law a years ago. (It folds up like an umbrella)

Stockings
My siblings and I always set up stockings each year. We knew that Santa (or rather my mom for sure) would fill up the stockings on Christmas Eve. On Christmas morning we would wake up super early of course and sneak out to peek into the stockings. We continued to believe that Santa would bring us little gifts, well until we all just grew up and moved away. Now the stockings are way to full and heavy to be placed on the fireplace mantle. In fact at my mother in law's condo and our new house here, there is no fire place. (That is weird, I did not previously notice before I bought this house that it didnt' have a fireplace. Must be a small town thing) Anywayz we'll just lay them out by the tree I suppose. In fact the stockings labelled one for each person in the household including my brother in law and his wife, were among the first items we unpacked in the new house, so the kids actually have the stockings already set up in their rooms!

Mega Christmas Party
We usually make the trek to Toronto to spend Christmas with my mother in law.  We also attend the giant Christmas Potluck Party with her bible study group, which ends up being over 13 families with two grown children each and their gf/ bf/ spouse and little kids (in our case). There is enough food to feed an army, a White Elephant style gift exchange and decadent desserts at midnight. I'm going to post the wide angle lens group photo from 2011 soon.  An amazing feat by the photographer to catch everyone with their eyes open.

NORAD Tracks Santa's Sleigh
http://www.noradsanta.org/
I secretly login each Christmas Eve after the Night Before Christmas is read and the kiddies are all asleep, because I am curious about how fast Santa's sleigh must be travelling to drop off all the presents to the little children everywhere. I also secretly believe that NORAD has the ability to totally track Santa's sleigh by ground-based radar, satellite imagery, and fighter aircraft and google earth. Hey if NORAD is tracking Santa, he's gotta be so real! As well Santa lives in North Pole, Canada H0H 0H0