A few Christmas traditions

But first, a blurry picture of a piece of Thanksgiving pie. Pie that's now a slightly distant memory for that got any of it.

One of our family's traditions is to put up the Christmas tree on the day after Thanksgiving. Usually this means I set up the tree, and put lights on it, and then we wait days or weeks for the kids to clean their room before we put ornaments on the tree.

A couple of years ago, Sears had a sale in January where they were getting rid of their 6 foot tall trees for $5. I bought two of them. We have hundreds of ornaments for the tree, more than enough to fill both trees. Sometimes we end up helping the kids put ornaments on, but this year, we just handed them the ornaments one at a time, and let them put the ornaments where ever they wanted to. The kids seemed to enjoy it, and did a pretty good job.

We also hang stockings, every year one or two seem to disappear. Last year, I got a 'mass quantity' sized Christmas stocking. This year we've lost a few more stockings somehow, and we haven't yet replaced them, so just the obscenely large one is up right now.

Another tradition we have is to send out Christmas cards. We've tired keeping in touch with family and old friends, sometimes we don't do such a good job. Sometimes it's kind of hard to keep up with where everyone is. Lately we've done a picture of the family with the card, we haven't taken a picture yet this year. The kids have been helping with a little family message the last couple of years, we haven't talked about creating this one yet, either.

The last couple of years, we've done Christmas cookies for neighbors. (And cards.) The kids kind of like going out delivering plates of cookies. I haven't started cookies yet this year, cookies are a lot of work, I haven't decided if I've got the time and energy for it yet this year.