Something my husband and I have invested time in is creating traditions for our family. Especially Christmas traditions. Before our first Christmas together, we thoughtfully planned out what our Christmas traditions would be. We wanted to have some fun things in place so that we can look back 10, 20, 30 years from now and say, “We’ve been doing this since we first got married.”
That being said, I thought I’d share some fun pictures of our cozy little California home & fill you in on some of the traditions we do as a family.
|| 1 || Ornament Collecting
One of our most fun traditions (and probably most meaningful!) is collecting Christmas ornaments on every trip we take. We are BIG believers in traveling. It’s super healthy for a relationship to get away from the stress of everyday life and creates lifelong memories for the two of us. And the most fun way for us to relive those memories is by pulling out our ornaments each year and reminiscing about “that one time when we…”.
Below are some fun ornaments that we’ve collected throughout the years!
|| 2 || Christmas Date Night
We do this date sometime before Christmas (duh) and it’s just a blast. Each year (since we’ve been dating actually), we grab some Starbucks holiday drinks and build ourselves a gingerbread house. We started off building two separate houses, but I think my husband got tired of me pretending it was a competition & him always losing, so we now share responsibilities for building one house. It helps us bond, or something like that. While creating our masterpiece, we put on the movie Four Christmases and quote the movie basically word for word. Vince will never get old in my book.
|| 3 || Christmas Eve Dinner
We have made it a tradition to get dressed up on Christmas Eve and go out for a fancy dinner. I’m not sure why we chose to do this one, but hey, I’m not going to protest getting dressed up and eating yummy food.
|| 4 || Christmas Day Movie
Another fun tradition is, after all of the chaos and excitement of Christmas day, going to see a movie. It’s extremely difficult to fight off the depressing, Christmas-is-officially-over, no-more-Christmas-candles feeling (at least for me). It’s like I’m five years old again and my birthday party just ended. So, we go to a movie. Hollywood always saves some of the best movies for Christmas day anyway, so it brings back a little bit of happiness that I lose once my husband tells me “no more Christmas music”.
|| 5 || Future Christmas Eve Traditions with Kiddos
Currently, my husband and I really just get each other one large gift for Christmas. So, we can’t really open a gift on Christmas Eve. However, when we have kids, it will be so fun to let them open a small little gift after we read the Christmas story together on Christmas Eve. Thinking about that makes me giddy. Fireplace roaring, little kids being pesky and not listening, and some good old fashioned family time with hot cocoa.
Do you have any Christmas family traditions that you & your family do? I’d love to hear them!