A Few Christmas Traditions

We have spent a lot of time this past week making memories with some of our favorite Christmas traditions.

One of my favorite traditions is Christmas baking (particularly sugar cookies). My mom and I got together on Tuesday afternoon and baked and decorated cookies. I took my camera over but didn't manage to get any pictures of the afternoon. Earlier that day, I made some toffee and fudge too. I packaged up the goodies and took them to Nathan's teachers the next day in appreciation of the great care they give to him every week. I love to bake, but hate having the food around because we eat too much of it. Thankfully it works great for Christmas gifts!

On Wednesday night, Matt, Nathan and I went to see the lights at Rhema. Matt and I have gone to look at their lights every year we have lived in Broken Arrow. I like it because it is a fun spur of the moment weeknight activity. It's close and free and a fun outing. Nathan loved seeing all the lights. He just stared and smiled the whole time.

"Quit taking pictures of me in my Christmas outfit. I've got lights to see."

Our new camera took much better pictures of the lights than we have gotten in years past.

Nathan had such a good time watching everything.

I also mailed all of our Christmas cards this week which is another tradition in our family. Every year we include a family photo with our cards. This year we went ahead and made a photo card with a couple of extra pictures of our cutie. I really, really love this tradition and seeing how our family grows and changes each year.

I got out all of our past card photos to compare. I can't believe this is our sixth married Christmas. Time flies when you're having fun with the one you love!  Someday, I'd love to frame all of them together on a wall.

Matt and I celebrated our annual Christmas date this weekend too. It's another favorite tradition. Each year around Christmas we plan a special date and try and do something out of the ordinary than a typical date night. (I wrote about our last two dates here and here). This year's date was probably our favorite. We decided to go on a helicopter tour of Christmas lights. It was such a fun experience to enjoy together. Neither of us had flown in a helicopter before, and we had a blast. I kept getting on to Matt because he was watching the gauges in the helicopter instead of looking at the lights :). We flew from the Jenks airport to the Rhema lights in Broken Arrow and back. It was neat seeing the entire Rhema display in one view. That was my favorite part. We also flew past the mall on the way back and saw all the traffic.

We got terrible pictures, but we were flying about 80 mph(according to my husband who was reading the gauges), so we didn't expect any good ones.

After the flight we ate dinner at Johnny Carino's and then came back home. My parents kept Nathan at their house overnight, so we had the rest of the evening to ourselves which was nice to relax and spend time together and get a good night's sleep. I've been wondering about how we will do Christmas dates as Nathan gets older because I'd want him to be involved in some of our activities, but doing special things just as a couple is important to me too. Maybe we'll go on two dates in the future for Christmas, one as a family and one as a couple. We'll see, but this is not a tradition we are planning on ending any time soon.

I look forward to all our Christmas traditions each year. This year we are altering a few and adding some new ones, and I can't wait to experience them all with my two sweet boys.