Christmas Traditions & Decorations

I just wanted to share a little of the Faught family Christmas traditions. The birth of Christ is the reason for the season and I am so thankful that God would send his son down to this earth as a little baby. We love to celebrate this joyful time of year and incorporate some fun family traditions. Taylor and I strive to make our holiday family traditions a husband and wife thing. We do not want everything to revolve around our children, because we know that one day our children will leave us. If our children want to help us decorate the tree or make Christmas cookies, that's a bonus. We also want to be understanding if our grown children do not want to be at our house for Christmas, but want to celebrate this time in their own homes. Taylor and I have been very blessed to have parents and in-laws that are understanding and flexible with the holiday schedule, and we want to keep that up. Our goal is to create traditions that continue until we are a little old couple. Here are some of the things we like to do:

We love to watch a Christmas movie while we put up the tree! Usually Taylor picks Christmas Vacation.

Here is a picture of Shepherd's Christmas tree. He would count to three when I would turn the Christmas lights on each morning. It was too cute!

Another small tree

Here are the stockings Christmas morning.

Presents Christmas morning, the big one was for Shepherd from Papa and Nana

We like to read the story of Christ's birth as a family over Christmas dinner. This year we read the version in Luke. The picture above and below is Shepherd's bible and I just love it! I try to read Shepherd a bible story over breakfast each morning. The two weeks leading up to Christmas, I read the story of Jesus's birth every morning. Little kids really respond to repetition and I noticed how the more I read the stories, the more Shepherd responded. He got to where he would point at baby Jesus and say, "Ba-by." This is big for Shepherd since reading stories is not his favorite thing, he is usually too busy to sit down and listen to a story. By reading the Christmas story each morning I was able to start my day embracing the true reason for the season!

The picture above might just look like a shoe rack to you, but it was a fun little thing I did with Shepherd this year. Since Shep is only 19 months old, we did not get to do an advent calendar for the month of December. In the future I hope to do one with my children, having a daily scripture and fun activity, but this was more age appropriate. The shoe holder had 24 spots and each morning Shepherd got to open a small present. I wanted to do this instead of getting him a bunch of gifts on Christmas morning. Toddlers get overwhelmed easily and I knew that he would have a lot more fun playing with a new toy each day. We decided to get him one nice gift for Christmas morning, (the Woody doll from Toy Story), and let him open up something small each morning of the month. Most of the gifts were craft supplies, (Crayons, color sheets, play dough, etc..) that I collected from the dollar store. Shepherd had so much fun with this activity! As soon as he would get out of bed, he would run right to the gift closet giggling and excited.

Lastly, Taylor and I like to make and decorate sugar cookies together. Listening to Christmas music, drinking hot chocolate, and decorating cookies is such a fun activity. Shepherd was napping this year while we decorated cookies but he sure loved eating them.