Holidays Day 5

Most people have lots of presents under their Christmas tree in the days leading up to Christmas Day.  We didn't have any presents under our tree until Christmas morning - a tradition my mom started for three reasons.  The first reason she always gave was that Santa brought all of the presents on Christmas Eve.  I have to admit that it was pretty cool to wake up on Christmas morning (I was always the first one up in the house) and see presents all over the living room.  All of Jason's presents were wrapped with one kind of paper and all of mine were wrapped with another.  My mother was all about equality of gifts, Easter Eggs, etc.

As we got older, we started to wonder why gifts sent from out of town or from other relatives didn't go under the tree before Christmas.  Then my mom gave us the real reason gifts didn't appear until December 25th.  When she was little, she and her three brothers would unwrap and rewrap each of their gifts under the tree so that by Christmas morning there weren't any more surprise gifts.  My mom wanted to make sure that Christmas morning was always a surprise.

Now that I'm older, I think there was also a third reason for this Appling tradition - procrastination.  My parents hid most of the gifts in the trunks of their cars and waited until we went to sleep on Christmas Eve to do most of the wrapping, bike assembling, etc.  We always went to the late Christmas Eve service, so this meant my parents started their own wrapping party around 1am.  Who knows when they went to bed, but I think we were usually up around 8am.

For all three of the reasons stated above, I think we'll continue the Appling present tradition at our house.   Neither of our cars have a trunk though, so I'll have to get creative about where I stash Santa's loot.

Holidays Day 4

Meeting Santa and having my picture made was always a highlight of the season.  I don't know how many pictures there are of me by myself - think it was usually me and my brother on each of Santa's knees.  One of my favorite pictures is from the Christmas Magic Breakfast with Santa.  It must have been around 1986 or 87 - I was wearing an animal print sweatshirt with black stirrup pants and navy leather flats.  Nice outfit mom.  I thought I looked super cute.

Parker has now been to see two Santas, and we'll go on Saturday for third Santa at our neighborhood pancake breakfast with Santa.  Too bad we're only up to eating mixed fruits.  We'll have to wait until next year to have Deliman's yummy super-sized pancake.

Here are the pictures from Parker's most recent visit with Santa at the TCU Alumni event at Royal Oaks Country Club.  They had gingerbread house decorating stations for older kids complete with purple twizzlers and M&M's to make a TCU Rose Bowl house.  Hopefully this will become an annual event for us to do each year as Parker gets older.

Holidays Day 3

I love planning out our Christmas card picture(s) each year.  For me, it was a right of passage into married adulthood to send out couple and now family Christmas cards.  Jack makes the card every year, just like Benton's dog, Scooter, did when he was growing up.  We usually have our parents take our picture around Thanksgiving, since I think it should be a recent picture from the last few months of the year.  I've gotten around my own rule the last couple of years by making a collage of photos to include vacation pictures.

This year I used the collage of photos above and ordered post cards.  I was quite proud of my idea since it saved on envelopes, postage, and return address stamps.  Here are some more of Parker's pictures that didn't make the card this year:

Parker's Fort Worth Firsts

Parker had his first trip to Joe T's, Bluebonnet Bakery, PS The Letter, and Coopers BBQ today.














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Holidays Day 2

My favorite Christmas item for today is Christmas trees. I got mine finished last night with the help of my babysitter and her boyfriend!  My tree is almost all glass ornaments that I've collected over the last 7 years we've been married.  Our first Christmas after we got married, we lived on the third floor of an apartment in Las Colinas and Benton thought it was dumb to invest in a tree when we had no where to put it.  We got an 18 inch tall living Christmas tree and put in on our dining room table and I decorated it with mini glass ornaments.

I love the stories a family Christmas tree tells and how it shows the personality of the owner.  My parent's tree still has all of our homemade ornaments from our childhood and my mother-in-law's tree is a real tree with Christopher Radko Santa ornaments. The Lukert family in Wichita Falls has a nine foot tall tree with all four of their now-grown children's ornaments from the last 31 years.  They even hide a pickle ornament in the tree as an old German tradition.

I hope you have your Christmas trees up and decorated by now. I know they're a pain to put up and take down, but gosh, they're so fabulous while they're up.  I love turning it on and off each night and recalling the memories that go along with each of my ornaments.  I try to collect a new ornament whenever we take a trip, and I always buy the annual Waterford ornament at Dillard's each year.  So far, we haven't broken any yet, but its only been up a day and a half.  We put the tree in the office so it would be out of Parker's line of direct sight.  Unfortunately, he remembers where it is each morning and he makes a bee-line crawling for it as soon as you put him on the ground.

On the Move

Parker has eight more days until he's 8 months old, and we hit another milestone today. He pulled up to standing on his toy box and moved himself over to his table an dinosaur while taking baby steps - and with no support from mom. Obviously he is very proud of himself!











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Day 1 of Holidays

When I was little, the Christmas season always started the Sunday after Thanksgiving at our church's Advent Workshop. We made gingerbread houses out of mill cartons and graham crackers, rolled mini-marshmallows in jello powder, glued acorns and pinecones on wreaths, and undoubtedly got all hopped up on sugar and Christmas cheer.


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