Favorite Holiday Traditions & Memories

Ahhhh, it is here! My Christmas season has officially begun. For me, it is difficult for me to do any Christmas-thinking, besides my decorating, until I am on Christmas break, and then I usually run around to get everything done in time. However, this year I did some shopping before hand, and Mr. Hoosier and I are not doing gifts this year and instead saving for our Italy Trip in October 2011. With all this being said, I am now in what I call, "enjoy the season" mode!

There are so many things I love about the holidays: decorations, cookies, the first snowfall, the music, movies, and the kindness of others. However the one thing I enjoy the most, is the traditions of the Holiday season. As Mr. Hoosier and I create this life together, we are trying to incorporate ones for our childhood as well as those of our own.

As I reflect back on some childhood memories and traditions, here are some that top my memory... beware I have an uncanny memory!

1. Putting on Mariah Carey's Christmas cd and doing showchoir dance moves while putting up the Christmas tree.... yes, this happened from about 6th grade until I moved out of the house!

2. Opening one gift prior to attending Midnight Mass- it was always new pajamas!

3. Christmas Eve with the Rhoades side at my mom's.

4. When I was really little, my mom, brother, sister, Aunt, and three favorite cousins used to bundle up and get in my Aunt's Astro van and drive around Fort Wayne and look at lights. I remember the one time we went to this culde-sac of huge houses and a ton of lights and they had a mailbox for letters to Santa; we all had written one prior to and put them in there!

5. Christmas Eve at my Aunt Kathy's- she used to live in the same neighborhood where my mom and all her sisters grew up. One Christmas Eve we caroled throughout the neighborhood, and ended up caroling to many that knew my mom and aunts from when they were little girls! As I look back on this, I am amazed, and want to do it again!

6. In high school, my best friend and I would come home from midnight mass and wait for my parents to go to bed and shake ALL of my gifts... bad girls! But how I miss attending church and spending Christmas Eve with my BFF and her family!

7. Family ski trips every Christmas break!

8. Making Peanut Butter Cookies with mom and taking them to all of the neighbors and my Great- Grandma that was in the nursing home.

9. A one-time memory- all of the family in one house on Christmas day when Aunt Laura lived in Michigan. Santa miraculously knew we were all there and delivered all the gifts there! I woke everyone up at 5am to open gifts, and received a Walkman... yes, you read that correctly!

And my most favorite and most missed Holiday memory... piling into one bed with my brother and sister anxiously awaiting "Santa Claus' arrival". Even when we became too big to pile into one bed, we still tried. Sometimes my brother would sleep on the floor and let us girls have the bed! Oh how I miss those days, but will treasure them forever! I hope some day we can share that special memories with our own children, and all pile into one house with all of our kids and have Christmas day just one more time!!!

I hope you take the time this Holiday season to create new traditions and relive old ones with the ones you love the most!

Until next time,

H