A Christmas Tradition

For the past several years I have collected children's Christmas books. I finally accumulated enough by last year to begin a new family tradition. Instead of an advent calendar, I wrap 24-25 books. Included in the 24-25 gifts, are the Christmas movies bundles and Christamas Music CD case. Each day one child gets the opportunity to open a gift. Last year I had 24 gifts because we had 4 kids opening and 24 is divisible by 4. This year I have 25 because we have 5 kids opening gifts. Next year we will probably go to 24 again because there will be 6 kids. Not quite sure what we will do when we get to 7. Perhaps I will have to wrap 28 and start opening on November 27th. Anyway, we will cross that bridge when we get there. Here is a snapshot of Jason opening his gift on Friday:

Pretty cool basket, isn't it?

He opened Elmo's 12 Days Before Christmas Board book.

Even though the older kids know all the books already, they still enjoy the element of surprise and trying to find the movies and CDs early in the month.

I know I slacked on the blog on Friday and Saturday. I took Emily and Bradley and Sarah on a little field trip to my brother's family's house a couple hours away. My 8 year old nephew was in a local theatre play. It was A Christmas Story, the one based on the movie that came out 25 years ago. It was cute. If you've seen the movie, you might remember the scene where the main character, Ralphie, clumsily loses the lugnuts to the tire his dad is changing on the side of the road in cold, snowy Indiana. In the scene he shouts a bad word, but of course he doesn't actually say the word. He says, "Fudge!" and the narrator indicates that he actually said the real 4 letter bad word. Well, after the intermission Bradley asked my mom, "What's the bad word that Ralphie said?" My mom wasn't sure how to handle the inquiry so she called me over to help. I wasn't quite sure how to handle it either. I didn't want to lie and tell him "fart" or "fish." I wanted to be able to satisfy his innocent curiosity so I told him that it was a word that started with "F" and rhymed with duck. He was about to blurt it out, but I stopped him and told him that it was a very bad and ugly word and that we never ever say it. He understood. I hope. So it wasn't quite the educational experience I had planned for, but I suppose the day had to come when my sweet little children would be exposed to the F bomb. The evening was enjoyable and the kids had a good time staying up until 1 AM playing with their cousins.