Sleigh bells ring...

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• I'm unusually excited about winter/Christmas time this year.  

I'm excited for my family's holiday traditions.  My family has painted ornaments for several years, now our tree is entirely homemade ornaments, its pretty awesome.   

Me, Christmas of 2008.  Chris wanted a picture of Mercedes and the snowman he painted.

Since getting married,  my husband and I started a few new traditions.  He likes building gingerbread houses so we did one last year and will do another this year.  We spent our evenings painting ornaments or building the gingerbread house and drinking hot chocolate with marshmallow snowmen and whipped cream.  (and almost every night I'd either leave the whip cream out, or my ninja cat would get the marshmallows out of the cupboard/off the counter and strew them about the house, resulting in one or both having to be purchased again.)  I think this is one thing I am most looking forward to about this years holiday season, these evenings with my husband.  I got very excited when I saw the bag of marshmallow snowmen in the store last week, in just about two more weeks he will be on his way home from Florida and we can share some hot cocoa again.

Last year for Mercy's first Christmas she was 10 months old and we did a homemade handprint ornament for her and I'm looking forward to making another one this year, they are a lot of fun to make.

My family also opens one present on Christmas Eve.  I remember Christmases as a little girl, me and my sisters would ask if we could open just one present and our parents would act like they were going to tell us no, but they still always let us. 

I'm always interested in more traditions though, do you have any that your family does that you'd be willing to share?

I am definitely more excited about Christmas this year than I have been other years.  I might even listen to Christmas music, which I usually don't really like.