Holland's First Christmas - Part 1

It was pretty anti-climatic…for her. But the rest of us thought it was great!

We spent Friday through Sunday at my parent’s house – spending time with family, relaxing, a little bit of shopping, eating, and celebrating.

It’s always fun to wake up Christmas Morning, see the Christmas tree glowing, and the presents all perfectly placed around the room, and of course, the stockings stuffed so tight they look like they are going to pop. I’m pretty sure the stockings are my favorite part. I just love all the little gifts that end up in there, resting right on top of the orange stuffed in the toe!

I spent a lot of time before Christmas trying to figure out how we were going to “handle” Christmas as a family – your know – me, Tyler and our kids. I mean, here we are with our first child, and I just knew that if we didn’t figure out something now we would never have a real plan of attack – a standard by which this Pace Family would now and forever celebrate Christmas.

Okay – perhaps I was a little dramatic and worried for nothing, bur seriously, it was a bit of an obsession for me. And, yes, I do realize that traditions can change and that what we do this Christmas isn’t what we will always have to do. But, nonetheless, I felt strongly that we needed to come up with our own plan, our own tradition, our own celebration style.

The main things that were in my head as I researched, thought about, and peppered friends and family with questions were these; I want our little family…

·         to understand  that CHRIST is the reason we celebrate Christmas

·         to find joy in the GIVING more than the receiving

·          to SERVE one another and those around us

·         to spend TIME together

·         to focus on the THOUGHT not the amount of money spent

·         to keep things SIMPLE

While talking to a friend about my thoughts and ideas on the subject she explained how she and her husband do Christmas and it seemed to basically match what we wanted to focus on. She also shared with me a blog post about gift giving that I felt was a perfect fit for what we were trying to do.

And so, we adopted the Want-Need-Wear-Read tradition. Each person will receive four gifts, one that applies to each of these categories. Of course, Santa will still drop off a gift for each child and there will always be stockings, but this simple plan will definitely help us remain focused on the goals I listed above.

So, you ask, what did we get for Christmas?

Holland:

                Want = VTech Move & Crawl Ball
                Need = JJ Cole Bundle Me Car Seat Cover
                Wear = Sweater Dress & Wool Coat (perfect for Christmas on a Sunday)
                Read = Dr. Seuss’ Red Fish Blue Fish

Tyler:

                Want = External/Portable Hard Drive
                Need = Hair Clippers
                Wear = Flannel Shirt and Lined Jacket (to keep warm while working in the garage)
                Read = The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Brigitte:

                Want = Stand Mixer
                Need = Food Processor
                Wear = Scarves
                Read = Harlequin Romance (We laughed – and then returned it! Tyler is so funny!)

That was the receiving part. And for the giving...I just need to share what I did for my mom. I took a planner and marked each family member's birthday inside - in a scrapbook-ish kind of way. It turned out really cute. And then, inside I placed a bunch of coupons in an envelope. The coupons are for different services and things we can do together throughout this year - 2012. The coupons can then be placed in the planner - again, think scrapbook looking, on the day that she schedules with me. I really wish I would have taken a picture. It would really make more sense. Oh well. But, anyway, I think I might be most excited about this 'cause not only do I get to do some service for my mom, I also get to spend time with her each month. It's the gift that keeps on giving...for her and for me!

We loved Christmas this year! It’s definitely a lot of fun to watch a clueless baby try to figure out why she’s being told to rip the paper off of something. Priceless!

After presents, and church, and lunch…we headed back to Salt Lake to spend Christmas evening with Tyler’s parents and siblings. It was definitely a perfect – perfect – perfect Christmas…if I do say so myself.

Christmas Eve = New PJs

Christmas Morning = Sleepy Heads in New PJs

 

More from Christmas Eve

 

Change of PJs Christmas morning...'cause, you know, sometimes little girls pee their pants

More from Christmas morning...

Ready for Church...tired, but ready!

Thanks for celebrating with us...er...letting us celebrate with you, Gma Lucy and Gpa Chuck

And now I realize, in the chaos that is getting from one place to another on Christmas with no time to spare, we had an epic fail - no pictures with Gma Maggie and Gpa Craig. Darn the darn!