Trains, Trees & Traditions

I know, I know. The alliteration has to stop. I can’t help it. The keyboard made me do it. If it makes you think any better of me, I did delete several extremely corny puns before publishing this post. So it could have been a lot worse.

Anyway... we kicked off our holiday season a bit early this year with one of our newly instituted (and likely to be the long-time favorite) traditions---setting up the model train. We knew Caed would be the ever enthusiastic engineer, but didn’t realize how enthralled Dani would be. You can see from the video clip that she was eager to play the role of conductor. However, she might need to brush up a bit on her locomotive lingo, as she repeatedly insisted that the Caboose was a Boat.


The kids stayed up to the wee hours of the evening (past 8:00!) to help set up the train and play with Daddy, and they loved every minute. So the next morning Caed woke up, ran downstairs and into the family room, and then came screeching back into the office where Daddy was working. “Where’s the Christmas tree? I thought it would be here by now because it is Christmas time!” he shouted.

As nice as it would be for the tree to magically appear in the house, lighted and perfectly decorated, we explained that going to cut down our special Christmas tree is next on our list of holiday traditions. That is, after we celebrate Thanksgiving. We did get a little ahead of ourselves this year, didn’t we?

So I’ve been doing some pondering about holiday traditions, how to create meaningful memories, how to impart our beliefs about what Christmas is all about, and how to make it “magical” for our kids without getting lost in the materialistic mindset. I’d love ideas from all of you out there about what things you do to make the season special. So in the spirit of giving, how ‘bout you leave me a comment, and share some of your special holiday traditions?