We started our Christmas decorating today. It was a team effort.
Sexy Neck had the idea of wrapping a picture. He helped me balance the lights in the mantle and tried to figure out a few Christmas carols on the piano by ear. (How does he do that?)
JC helped with the garland, bows and lights.
CC helped with the advent calendar.
OC picked out the Christmas books.
All the boys drew Christmas pictures and put the wise men downstairs to start their journey to our nativity scene in Bethlehem our kitchen. The shepherd is on the upper shelf because he was on the hills above Bethlehem when the angels visited him. (At least that’s what the boys told me.)
Welcome to our home:
I love Christmas! It gets more and more interesting and exciting as our traditions evolve.
Our traditions:
We have our gingerbread dough in the fridge ready to make men. My mom started decorating gingerbread men when JC was wee!
We have an advent calendar that the boys get a small ornament and chocolate each of the twenty-four days before Christmas.
We have a nativity scene where baby Jesus arrives on Christmas Day and the three kings/wisemen arrive in January.
We decorate with lots of lights to take away the winter darkness.
We hang our stockings. This is the first year we have a fireplace mantle to hang them on. We actually have a two-sided fireplace so we had to have a discussion on where they should go. My mom made the stockings.
Do you have any traditions to share?
May you enjoy a restful, peaceful and beautiful advent/Christmas season.
"Be" ENOUGH 
beautiful joanna, as always. we have an advent wreath that we light one candle for each week of advent (1 candle in 1st week, 2nd candle in 2nd week…). we are thinking of painting together as a family this year between christmas and epiphany, as this is the darkest time of the year, and we’d like to have some more traditions focused on doing things as a family. we also aim to bake, and give away baking as gifts to neighbors.