Christmas is my FAVORITE! I have a feeling I am not the only one. ;) My wonderful memories from my childhood probably give me this warm and cozy feeling that I have whenever I think of Christmas.
Here are a few of the things I remember happening EVERY year, when I was a kid!
- our cousin came and stayed with us after Thanksgiving to help decorate our house for Christmas
- decorating sugar cookies with my grandma the week before -- this is probably my favorite! Her kitchen would be FULL of countless types of cookies, and my brothers and I spread sugar cookies out all over the table to decorate with every color sprinkle you can think of. We lost my grandmother over 11 years ago. For the past few years, I have taken on the sugar cookie challenge solo. It's not nearly as fun, but it does make my heart happy to remember those special moments with her!
- spending Christmas Eve at my grandparents' house -- opening 2 gifts! one from whichever cousin chose my name for the gift exchange, and one from my grandparents
- going to church with the whole family
- driving back to Normal, having a competition to see which sibling saw the most decorated houses on their side of the car ;)
- waking up at roughly 4am and ALWAYS convincing Josh (the youngest) that it was HIS turn to wake up mom and dad. They always acted mad, but years later, we discovered they would be awake laughing at us arguing about who should wake them! (one year, we used the dogs paw to scratch at their door to wake them up! -- we were SO excited!)
- getting lottery tickets in our stockings!
- spending the entire day in our pjs watching movies
Now that none of us live at home, 2 of us are married, and my brothers both have kids, Christmas has changed a lot. It is fun making "new" traditions. I can barely wait for Dan and I to have little ones to begin some Cleinmark Family traditions :)
I love the lotto tickets in your stockings!!
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