My favorite Christmas things

CHRISTMAS!....It is my most favorite Holiday EVER!!! Of course I get excited about getting all the loot...Who doesn't like presents, right?!?! But presents are not the reason I like Christmas, Christmas in our family has always been special, even when money was tight...My mom made all kinds of fun traditions!

• We are a baking family. You name it, we can make it turn out perfect. Every year though there are specific things we bake and give away as little gifts to those that mean lots to us (and of course snarf as we bake!) Cookies cookies cookies, Special chocolate covered Toffee (a very secretly guarded family recipe...could win a contest against anything out there--hands down), Peanut butter balls covered in chocolate, Fudge, and Great-Great Grandma's secret Butter Rolls...Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
• Christmas Decoration Rides in the car: Exploring all the fancy and not so fancy neighborhoods with all their cool decorations...Growing up it was Peacock Lane in Portland, Oregon for our family. LOVE LOVE LOVE all the pretty lights...
• The Christmas Pickle...a controversial German-American family tradition of sticking a pickle ornament in the tree and whoever finds it gets an extra present. Being an only child most of my life I never had much trouble fighting my way to the tree to find it. It still was always fun to get a little something extra and spend the morning looking for it hidden in the tree!
• CHRISTMAS MOVIES! I absolutely love Christmas movies! My yearly must-sees are: White Christmas(I wanted to be a Broadway singer when i was little and I know EVERY word to EVERY song!), Holiday Inn(I just love the old classics!), Home Alone, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story, The Family Man...I know there are more i just can't think of all of them at the moment
  (I'm at Lar's parents place and have yet to watch all of them...usually my parents and I do a whole marathon of movies while we bake and wrap.)
• Christmas songs: It wouldn't be Christmas without Amy Grant's first Christmas album...it was my favorite when i was 5 and somehow i still for some reason like it, however 80s it sounds. Mariah Carey and Bing Crosby along with many others are staples in our household.
• The Nutcracker. Every year growing up my mommy and I went to see it. I absolutely LOVE it!
• Christmas Carols: I love love love to sing Christmas songs in church. Some of my favorites are: O Holy Night, O Come all ye Faithful, It came upon a midnight clear, and Angels we have heard on High.
• Last but certainly not least is spending it with family and friends. Growing up, most Christmas' were spent with our very very good family friends(practically family), The Adams'. The last Christmas we spent with them was in 2000. They moved down to California and a year later my parents moved out here to the Midwest to be closer to my grandparents. I miss Charlotte's Apple Pie and most most favorite: her amazing, one of a kind, mashed potatoes. Mainly though, I miss them all and cherish all the fun memories growing up!

This year I'm spending Christmas with Lar's parents, his brother, his sister and brother-in-law and 18 mo. old nephew. With all the stockings hung, presents wrapped beneath the tree, and me in my Pjs the only thing left between me and Christmas morning is a good nights sleep.

to quote Jimmy Stewart and my best friend who mocks him in his raspy garbled voice:

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!