Christmas is definitely my favorite season! I love all of the extra family time we have together, the giving, crafts, treats, shopping dates, visits and fun. Our church has some wonderful traditions as well that we get to be a part of to focus on the real reason for the season! If we could have summer temperatures in December it would be absolutely perfect lol!
This month we continued our tradition of our random acts of kindness family advent. Some of these things that we did involved giving to others and other things were focused on family time together. In the past few years we had each thing scheduled on a calendar, but this year we decided to do it a little differently. We made a list of 24 things that we wanted to do and even added some as we went and each day we would pick one to do. We tried a few new ones this year. The kids really enjoyed taping money to a vending machine! We also did a few more family evenings like eating supper around the Christmas Tree. I just love the excitement the kids have for all of it!
This year Sandy and I started rethinking Christmas gifts. Our kids do not get a lot of things throughout the year, so Christmas is there time to ask for bigger things that we normally would not buy. But like a lot of families, they also end up with a lot of smaller things that they often do not use past Christmas day. We wanted to try to eliminate that part of it this year. Our children love doing things and going places more than they love things, so that had us plan out some different gifts. We decided instead of buying a lot of the little things that just won’t last, we would plan some fun together and with other families. During Christmas break we decided to head to the city for a night away in a nice hotel with an awesome water slide with two other families. This will be one of the surprises for the kids. We also have two other big events to surprise them with and I know how excited they will be, which makes me excited to finally be able to share it with them!
In the future I would love to move more and more in this direction. I would love for us to give up gifts entirely one of these years and enjoy a family trip away during the Christmas break. Our children grow up too quickly and making these wonderful memories with them are so important to me.
I Dream of Summer 
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