In my pretend life, that I play out in my imagination when the kids are driving me up.the.wall., I would smoothly and seamlessly concoct a Christmas full of at least 10 or 12 wonderful traditions that my children could look back on with a warm glow in their hearts and nostalgia for their childhoods.

(cue record ssccrraattcchh).

In reality our house is neither coordinated or calm enough to get through much of any planned activities or traditions.

I do what I can.

Brian is the baker in our family (and he's very good at it.). He loves making Christmas cookies and candies, so I leave all that to him and the kids. Over the last couple weeks they've made all kinds of goodies, and the girls have loved it.

Don’t ask me why the girls had their shirts off to make cookies.  Your guess is as good as mine.

We've also done a daily advent study with the kids this year. We went with Truth in the Tinsel, and we've really liked it. At the beginning of advent we made a chain with 25 links that each had a clue on them about the day's advent topic. Each night we read about a different aspect of the birth of Christ, and there were instructions for making an ornament for each day that went with the topic.

The girls loved taking turns taking a link of the chain each night - and most nights we even made it through the story. (Ok, maybe not most nights.) Their favorite part, though, was definitely making the ornaments.

I think the girls could probably share a pretty good version of the Christmas story now. (Notice I didn't say accurate.) Although, Sylvia spent most of advent fixated on the fact that Mary breastfed the baby Jesus. She thinks this part of the story is very cool.

The Friday that Bella left for her Christmas visit she was feeling very conflicted about leaving. About an hour before she left, she came up and asked me if we could do advent early that day so that she wouldn't miss it. Of course we did. I love that she asked.

I love our family Christmas. Mostly because I love our family.