Creating Traditions

Being that its the twins first "everything" this year, we are trying to start our own family traditions by pulling from those we both grew up with and making up our own as we go along. So far, I am borrowing some of the newer traditions my mom started when my little sister was born (12 years ago) and putting my own twist on them.

One of the traditions she had started with my sis is to fill a jumbo sized stocking with all her gifts and on Christmas morning while she was asleep, sneak into her room and put the stocking filled with gifts on her bed with her. When she would wake up she would be so excited to open her gifts and always surprised Santa was able to sneak it in without waking her.


This year I got the boys their own jumbo stockings from Pott.ery.Bar.N and planned on filling them with all their wrapped gifts and sneaking them into their nursery Christmas morning. This doesn't really make sense this year since they are babies and #1 too small to get out of bed and be excited to open gifts, and #2 the stocking is much bigger than they are and could be dangerous if placed in their crib. So for this year we will bring the babies out and just take photos of them with their stockings and opening their gifts with our help. It should be neat to see them with this huge stocking, and over the years watch as they grow bigger and the stocking looks smaller.

We are also going to start collecting ornaments for them. Every year we are going to get them one ornament each (for them to open on Christmas Eve and add to the tree) something symbolic of their life in that year. The idea is to collect them over the years so that when they are older and have their own family and trees, we will give them their lifetime collection of ornaments to take with them. This year I had ornaments made for them that have their names and "Twins 1st Christmas'' written on them with the year.

I wanted to do the Christmas Jammies as a gift they could open on Christmas Eve and wear that night, but there were just so many cute designs that I bought several (way too many) sets of jammies and had them start wearing them on Dec 1st! Luckily, I saved one last pair as their gift on Christmas Eve so they could wear a new set that night. ;)

When they get older I want to do the "leave some cookies for santa" bit and make fresh cookies with the boys. That way Mommy and I can have a little snack as we stay up wrapping!

Christmas just got so much more exciting now that the boys are here! I can't wait to watch them open their gifts this year and try and eat all that paper!