traditions

“What an enormous magnifier is tradition! How a thing grows in the human memory and in the human imagination, when love, worship, and all that lies in the human heart, is there to encourage it”

(Thomas Carlyle)

not the best picture in the world

This year we gave Gage the book,

"When You Take a Mouse to the Movies"

and the stuffed mouse to go with it.

Our tradition is that we write in the book

and paste in a picture.

This is the picture going in his new book.

Christmas Eve we have several traditions.

This is one we don't talk about with others, but is the highlight

of the entire Christmas Season.

(it's good to have secret traditions!)

We try to get FIRST DIBS

on the missionaries for Christmas Eve each year

AND

we invite at least one other

REALLY FUN person over

This year we lucked out with our set of Elders

PLUS their 2 roommates! along with

"NancyTaylor" (all one word, please)

The tradition includes EVERYONE participating

in our little Christmas pagent

(Where am I? I'm the narrator, of course! It's TRADITION)

Christmas Eve the kids all sleep in one room (quite a feat when Trevor & his family, Brooke & her family are visiting!) .... Anyway, Santa makes his delivery upstairs, including stockings (true, in Henderson we don't have an upstairs - but traditionally, it's how we differentiate between the stockings). He also delivers goodies and surprises to the downstairs stockings which the kids can retrieve at any horrid hour of the morning. This keeps them busy for a couple of hours so Mom & Dad can get a little more rest. For those with young kids, really young kids, DON'T THINK THAT WHEN THEY'RE ALL TEEN-AGERS YOU GET TO SLEEP IN! Even with the downstairs stockings to keep them busy, we were up at 4:38 am Christmas morn!

Then they all line up, youngest in front and oldest in back.

Lucky Azure.

It's only when the grandkids

are here that Azure is de-throned.

Since our oldest, Trevor, was a baby, we've taken

the wrapping paper picture.

We've loved watching the pictures zoom out

to include in-laws

then grandchildren

This wasn't our year tho' - we're without our grown kids and their kids

so we're back to just 3

3 GORGEOUS still-living-at-home kids

We have lots more traditions for which there are no pictures:

*french chocolate *ornaments from Grandma & Grandpa Call * puzzles *games *caroling *tournaments *Christmas movies *hugs *santa letters ******

TRADITIONS

they're good for us