Christmas Traditions

I really failed at getting good pictures of our pre-Christmas stuff this year! Here are the couple I did get:

Trying to get my kids to pose in front of our newly decorated tree and they were not cooperating!! Haha~

That's a little better. =) Again - how did I not get one of them in their dresses and church clothes in front of the tree this year?

Making donuts and getting ready to watch Luke 2.

Gingerbread house night! This is the only semi-good picture I got the whole night. I can't believe I didn't get a group shot of their finished houses! I think my camera ran out of batteries. Dang it!

And that's it for pictures. Pathetic, right?!

Last year I tried to do a daily Christmas advent calendar. I was so excited and made a list of activites/things we could do for the month of December. I don't think I'll ever do it again. Maybe I'll do an advent calendar - just not so intense! I decided it's more fun to have our traditions that we do every year and not stress about doing a daily thing.

Some of our traditions include:

* Watching Luke 2 with Amy Grant's Breath of Heaven song dubbed over it and making donuts and drinking hot cocoa. We do this one a couple times each year!
* Making gingerbread houses with friends.
* Watching the First Presidency Christmas devotional.
* Singing Christmas songs every night before bed.
* Having Christmas movie nights.
* Looking at lights.
* Making cookies for Santa.
* Acting out the nativity on Christmas eve.

Anyway, It's a small list. I really want to build it up as we become more established. Usually we try to get a picture with Santa and deliver goodies to friends but that hasn't happened these last couple years! I would love to do 12 days of Christmas and find other ways to serve. What fun traditions do you have that I can steal?!! =)