Decorating's Done!

A Christmas tradition that my family and I keep is putting up and decorating the Christmas tree every year on the day after Thanksgiving.  I really don't remember when we started this tradition, but we've done it for years.  I'm sure we probably started it after the children were born because they like for the Christmas lights and decorations to be up as many days as possible. 


Our kitchen, dining area, and living room are all one big room, so the picture you see above on the left is the island in the kitchen.  We like to put something pretty in the middle of the island not only so we can enjoy seeing it but also because that motivates us to keep the island clean instead of letting it collect clutter!  On the right, of course, is our Christmas tree.  We have a pre-lit tree because my hubby hates stringing up Christmas lights!  It's much faster and easier than stringing lights too, so the kids don't get as impatient!  We used to have a real tree every year, and I'd like to do that again one day.  For now, though, the pre-lit tree seems to work best for us.


This morning we let everybody sleep a little bit late, and then we all (except Hannah) went up into the attic to drag down all of the boxes that we needed.  Scott and Mary Grace usually put up the tree while I clean off the entertainment center pictures and things.  Then Mary Grace and I put the ornaments on the tree.  The guys don't particularly like doing that part.  After the tree is all decorated and I've finished dusting the shelves of the entertainment center, Scott and I usually set out the decorations on the shelves.  Mary Grace is usually tired of helping by that time. 

I put a few other decorations here and there (like the reindeer and the teddy bear on the rocking chair), and I usually put out a Christmas throw pillow or two.  Some years Scott puts up red bows on the front porch columns, but I don't think he's going to do it this year.  We do put out a Mr. Snowman and Mrs. Snowman on either side of the front door too.  That's about it for us.  We don't decorate the entire house.  To be honest, I'd love to have Christmas decorations everywhere, but I'm just not motivated enough to take the time to put them all out and to take them all down after the season is over!  So I'm content with what we do. 

Mary Grace does like to have a pink Christmas tree in her room to match her pink and yellow room.  Hopefully I'll be able to post pictures of that later.  I told her that she has to clean her room before she can put up her little tree in there, so we'll see if it gets put up this year!  I hope so because she loves it so much.  Hopefully this weekend we can get in there and get it cleaned up a bit.  It will need to be cleaned up and cleaned out a bit before Christmas anyway, so we might as well get it done, right?

So how about your family?  Do you have a certain day that you put up your Christmas decorations each year?  Do you decorate the entire house, or do you keep it to the living room or other "main" rooms in your house?  Does the whole family like to get involved in decorating, or do you do it mostly by yourself?  I'd love to hear from you!

A Gingerbread Tradition

One of the nicest holiday traditions at my house is the gingerbread house that we make each year.  My younger daughter's birthday is December 2.  It just so happened several years ago that we made a gingerbread house on her birthday.  We didn't plan it that way; that's just how it happened.  When we thought about it, we decided that that would make a really nice tradition, so we started making a gingerbread house every year on her birthday.  I know we've done it for at last 3 years (including this year), and maybe 4 years. 

Right now we prefer to buy the pre-assembled gingerbread houses, and we just do the decorating.  The first year, I bought a cheaper gingerbread house set that we had to assemble ourselves.  It was torture to Mary Grace to have to wait until the next day to do the decorating, but the house had to "set" overnight so it wouldn't fall apart while being decorated.  For now it's worth a bit of extra expense for the convenience of being able to immediately decorate it and not have to worry that the whole thing will fall apart!  I figure that one day when Mary Grace is older, she may want to assemble her own house or even bake her own gingerbread "cookies" to use to make the house.

When we went to the store, we found both a gingerbread house kit and a gingerbread townhouse kit.  Because they were fairly inexpensive, we bought one of each.  We are saving the gingerbread house to decorate on December 2.  We decorated the gingerbread townhouse last night.  It was lots of fun, and I think Mary Grace did a great job!

Here's what we started out with.  Mostly just the pre-assembled house and the decorations and icing included in the kit.  We also had to use our own scissors, corn starch, rolling pin, and parchment paper.

Mary Grace likes to do most of the decorating herself, so I let her decide where everything goes and what she wants it to look like.  I mainly put on the icing wherever she wants it and offer suggestions if she can't get something like she wants it. 

The first year or two that we did the gingerbread houses, it was so hard for me to let her decide how to decorate it because I wanted it to look beautiful when it was finished.  Thankfully, I realized that it's far more important to establish a tradition that she will look back on with happy memories than it is for the gingerbread house to be perfect.  She gets to use her creativity and have fun while spending time with me, and those are the most important things! 

We have other traditions that we do together as a family which I'll tell you about later.  Do you have any holiday traditions that you and your family do every year?  Have you made any new traditions, or are they things that carry over from when you were a child?  I'd love to hear about them!

San Antonio

My husband and I recently went to San Antonio.  (I tagged along on one of his business trips.)  Besides just having a great time together, we enjoyed sight-seeing during his free time.   I don't remember learning much (if anything) about the Alamo when I was in school, so it turned out to be one of my favorite attractions.  I had no idea what a colorful history the Alamo has! 

First of all, the Alamo that you see in the photo above is only one small part of what was originally a mission serving as home to missionaries and their Indian converts for nearly 70 years.  All that is left now is the building you see as well as a long building (you can see a bit of it on the left side of the photo above) called the long barracks. 

The original name of the mission was Mision San Antonio de Valero.  It was renamed in the early 1800s (when it was no longer used as a mission) when the Spanish military stationed a cavalry unit there.  The soldiers, in honor of their hometown, called it "Alamo de Parras, Coahuila."  (Alamo is the Spanish word for cottonwood.)  

During the Texas Revolution, Ben Milam, along with his Texian and Tejano volunteers, occupied the Alamo.  In February of 1836, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and his army prepared to fight and hoped to defeat the Texian and Tejano volunteers.  The defenders of the Alamo were able to hold out for 13 days against Santa Anna and his army. 

The defenders sent out couriers asking for help defending the Alamo, but the only help they received was about 32 men.  This brought the total number of defenders to nearly 200 men.  They were far outnumbered by Santa Anna and his army.  They refused to give up, though, because they believed that the Alamo was the key to the defense of Texas.  They would give up their lives before they would give up the possibility of Texas being a free state. 

The final attack came before daybreak on the morning of March 6, 1836.  (The movies about the Alamo show the battle as having occurred during the day.  It actually happened while it was still night.)  The defenders were able to hold back Santa Anna and his troops for a while, but they were eventually overwhelmed.  By sunrise, Santa Anna had entered the Alamo compound and secured victory. 

All of the defenders were either killed during the battle or were executed after the battle was over.  Because the defenders were so willing to die for their conviction that Texas should be free, the battle has come to symbolize their heroic struggle against overwhelming odds.  These men made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom. 

And in case you're wondering, Jim Bowie (the renowned knife fighter) and David Crockett (frontiersman and former congressman from Tennessee) were among those who gave their lives defending the Alamo.  By the way, while he lived, David Crockett was never called "Davy Crockett" except by relatives. 

This is just a tiny bit of information that is available about the history of San Antonio, the lives of the men who defended the Alamo, and the effort to make Texas a free state.  I hope you will leave me a comment letting me know if you learned anything new from my post today.  I hope so!  In a day or so I'll share some photos of the River Walk.  I hope you'll come back to see me!