Traditions

Hmmmm.  Who would have thunk it?

One day you wake up on Christmas and you're 35 and you have your own little family with their very own traditions.  Traditions that are not exactly what either parent had growing up, but the perfect traditions for the family you have now.

Did you know you have to sprinkle reindeer dust out on the front walk to make sure the reindeer can find your house?  Of course you have to put out cookies for Santa, but the reindeer get food, too - a cool little mix that has come home from school the past few years (and mommy wonders if she can ever recreate when the time comes...).  You can also open all of your presents from each other on Christmas Eve and that way you just see what Santa brought you the next morning (conveniently this tradition from Shawn's family fits right in with my obsessiveness because I can spend all night assembling, organizing and putting away the mess).  And, of course, Santa doesn't wrap presents because he just pulls them out of his bag - so there's not even any wrapping paper to clean up on Christmas day!  Christmas morning you eat Caramel Sticky rolls like my Grandma Selim used to make - only you make them the Ali Johnson way, by putting the carmel sauce and brown sugar concoction with pre-made Sister Schubert rolls (a little 7,000 calorie* carbohydrate-filled slice of heaven).

And, there were things the whole month leading up to Christmas.  There were the nativity calendars.  "We haven't done our nativity calendars!" - I heard that once a day, 25 times over the month of December.  And, there was that Elf on the Shelf.  Yeah, I know I felt a little overwhelmed by Jingle when he first showed up at our house.  But, White Family, thank you!  He's been everything we could have hoped for and more - I look forward to many more years of his spying and hiding.

Weird.  I don't remember growing up and becoming the adult.  But, sometimes, like now, it sure does have some pretty cool perks.

*calorie count is an estimate.  ;)