One of My Favorite Christmas Traditions {Recordable Story Books}

We moved to Arizona in August, and we did not go anywhere for Christmas that year. We stayed here in Arizona and it was kinda hard. But, due to lack of vacation time we stayed here. The following year we had Ava it was her first Christmas, she turned 9 months old on Christmas Eve. Again we did not go anywhere to see family for Christmas, we stayed here in Arizona and had our first Christmas as a new family. 

My parents sent along a gift package for our family and inside was the most precious gift, this recordable story book The Night Before Christmas.

As I turned each page a familiar voice read each word, then another voice read the next page, and so on till it was finished. I sat there in my living room with my baby girl and heard the voices of each of our family members. Crying like a fool cause I missed them so, and so thankful they took the time to do this. 



Now, each year they record a story book and give it to my children. We're getting quite the collection and I love this Christmas tradition. 

If you live far away from family this is the perfect tradition to start with them. Sometimes I open the books when I just want to hear their voices. 

What are some of your favorite family traditions around the holidays?

Our Christmas Traditions

So, I wasn't going to do it.

I wasn't going to put up the tree or any of the decorations before Thanksgiving. 

But, you see we're going to be in Iowa for over two weeks in December and I wanted to truly enjoy our tree, and our home decorated for Christmas. 

So we pulled out the boxes of decorations and it happened. 

Our tree has been up for over a week now and I kinda love it. 

I thought I'd talk a little bit about our Christmas traditions and share some of family traditions. 

We pray for every family that sends us a Christmas card, read more about that here.

Each of our children gets 4 gifts, read more about why and what here.

This year we're doing our first advent calendar, see it here. 

Every year we take a picture in front of the tree and put it in a frame ornament to place on the tree next year, we've been doing this since we first got married so it's been fun to see the pictures through the last six years, see them here. 

We also bake my Great Grandmas sugar cookies, and I love sharing those memories with my kiddos now.

Another new tradition my sister and I are doing for our kiddos is a Night Before Christmas box. I saw this idea online a couple months ago and I immediately thought of it for this year since all the cousins will be together. My sister and I bought all the kids matching Christmas jammies. We'll put them in a box for them to open on Christmas Eve, together with a Christmas movie, popcorn, hot cocoa and some other goodies. I plan on putting them in the same box every year to pass it down year to year have these Christmas eve goodies inside every year.

What are some of your favorite Christmas traditions?

{Traditions} Christmas Cards

I send out a Christmas card every year, it's something I've done and look forward to for the last 4 years we've been married. I appreciate getting them as much as I love giving them to our family and friends. So when Christmas is over and we start taking down the decorations I can't bear to part with them.

I mean, people spend a lot of time and money on them and I think that's valuable. We started this tradition last year, and continued it again this year. I take off my Christmas cards people have sent off the wall and put them all on a serving platter and place them on our kitchen table.

Each night of January at dinner we pick a card up from one of the families that sent us a card, and we pray for that family. We know them all personally so we have some direction to pray, but mostly we pray God's blessing and favor over them for the year. 

I love doing this, I feel like if someone took the time to send us a card the least we can do is pray God's blessing over them. Let them know in some small way we're thinking of them.

Afterwards I usually put them in a photo album and save them, but this year I did something a little different. Come back in a few days and see what I did with the Christmas cards this year. 

Did you start any new traditions this year? I'd love to hear about them, tell me in the comments below!

Happy Saturday!