12 Days of Christmas!

I love traditions and we have LOTS of them! Some of my favorites are ones we have at Christmas time! I thought I'd share one of my personal favorites! This one was adopted from my friend Theresa. It has been modified and fine tuned to what it is today!

We have three little trees set up in our family room. Hanging on the tree's are 12 tags. One for each of the 12 days of Christmas. My kids really look forward to seeing the tags get put on the trees! On December 13th we start the 12 days of Christmas as a family. The idea is to spend time as a family enjoying the Christmas season as a family! It's so easy to be stressed and busy and not take the time to relax and enjoy each other. I used to buy games, puzzles and movies as gifts for Christmas that we never played or had time to do together! Our 12 days of Christmas tradition stretches the fun and anticipation throughout the month! We have learned to adapt the 12 days to activities that we have like Ward parties, concerts and family parties, but we still take the time to do things with just our family!

This year we are spending our 12 days of Christmas like this:

1. Baking Day (We had so much fun Saturday making cookies together!)
2. Puzzle Night (Vaughan & I choose a new puzzle, I wrapped it and we opened and started putting it together yesterday! They are working on it as I type! This is fun because they will spend the rest of the month putting it together! The kids LOVE this one!)
3. Holli's Choir Concert (We just got back from this amazing concert! It was fun to listen to beautiful Christmas music and support Holli too!)
4. Game Night (I bought a new game...It is wrapped under the tree and ready to be played! We will spend the evening enjoying our new game together!)
5. Story Night (I like to buy a new Christmas book every year. We have a very neat collection of Christmas stories. Some short, some for children, some longer! I put them out each year and we re-read them through the month.)
6. Temple Lights. (It wouldn't be Christmas without a drive to see the temple lights and then a drive around town to see light displays in various neighborhoods! We like to sing Christmas songs and end up at home for hot chocolate and donuts!)
7. Shopping Night. (Some years we have done this earlier and shopped for our "giving tree" recipients. This year we had to modify it - Mom already bought the giving tree gifts, so we will go shopping for our "sister gifts".)
8. Ward Party.
9. Movie Night. (We love Christmas movies at our house! I try to buy a new one each year. This year I bought "The Nativity" - I thought Sunday would be a good day to have our movie night!)
10. Deliver Goodies. (We like to make treats for our neighbors! We will deliver them tonight!)
11. Durfee Family Party. ( The Durfee family is making a change this year and having our Christmas party on Tues instead of Christmas Day! I think this will be fun and make Christmas Day a little more relaxing!)
12. Moore Christmas Eve. (We will have our traditional FIESTA Dinner and gift exchange. We have a family talent show after dinner and then the cousins exchange their gifts! Our talent show is pretty low key - basically you perform if you want to and it's one per family! We have music, a story and singing! Sometimes it is pretty hilarious!