I am sure all of you are pretty tired at this point of me telling you how much I love Christmas time, but guess what? You are going to have to hear about it again. Christmas is a holiday that is full of traditions in my house. Some may say that I am stuck in my ways, but each year I insist on doing things the same way. Because when it comes to Christmas change is no good, and I know that it wouldn’t feel like Christmas to me if it were done any other way…so I wanted to share with you my Christmas traditions…The traditions that make me such a happy girl this time of year.

1. It all starts with the cutting down of the Christmas tree. A fake tree won’t do. I will admit that I strayed and had a fake tree in my home for a few years, but my parents tree is NEVER fake. Each year our family gets together to go to the Christmas tree farm to cut down the tree. It’s always been a joke that we make my dad hike to the farthest spot to cut down the tree, but these days I feel less and less bad because we have my brother, my husband, and future brother in law to help him with the manly duties of cutting the tree. In my own home The Captain and I have had a real tree for the past 2 years. The reason behind the fake tree for so many years was because I didn’t know of a Christmas tree farm in LI (it’s not like PA), but last year we gave in and bought a pre cut tree. This year we braved the rain and went to a local tree farm (although it wasn’t the best and I wouldn’t go back there). We got a pre cut tree there too though…but I had to give The Captain a break since it was pouring rain and muddy..I didn’t want to make him lay on the ground and chop it down!
2. Decorating the tree. I LOVE decorating the tree! In the past Captain Awesome has been fired from Christmas decorating due to his lack of enthusiam (I’m not sure if that really was punishment to him) but this year I told him it was important to me if he helped so he did…by helping I mean putting up 1 ornament and making us Hot Toddies, but I think providing the alcoholic beverages is a perfect job for him! The bottom line is that we had a nice afternoon together listening to Christmas music and being together..so it was a start of a great tradition for us. I also help to decorate my parents tree after we cut it down. It’s great to put up all the old ornaments. They each have such a special meaning. Their tree is filled with all the ornaments we made as children. I can’t wait to have ones like that up on my tree in the future. My tree at home is starting to have meaningful ornaments such as the “our first home” ones, as well as “Our first Christmas” ones we got after we were married.
3. Christmas Eve. For Christmas we travel to PA. All the years we were dating my husband and I did separate holidays, but once we got engaged my husband made the effort to come with me to PA. I am so thankful he recognizes  the importance of this holiday to me. Christmas Eve we normally go over to a family friends house who has and “open house”, then we go to church, and then we eat a wonderful dinner prepared by my mom. After all that it’s time to open presents (Like a Black Diamond Ring) from the family to each other. Every year we get a game, and every year we play that game into the night! We also all get a pair of new pajamas that are to be worn on Christmas eve. (Can’t stray from the tradition) When we were younger my dad would read “The Night Before Christmas” to us before we went to bed…I hope that when I have children The Captain will continue that tradition. This year I am hoping to find a good signature cocktail to drink! (any suggestions?)
4. Christmas day we still tend to get up early because we are excited to see what Santa has brought (yes I know Im 29). The pocket doors to the living room are closed and we can’t go in until we are all awake! We turn on the Christmas music, open presents and spend the morning watching the parade and “A Christmas Story”. We eat our holiday meal early around 1, and through out the afternoon and into the evening we get visitors!

I am sure there are a ton more traditions that I am forgetting, but the point is that it is such a wonderful holiday! I can’t wait for the day when I get to share the magic with my children, and look forward to years and years of the same traditions!

At the Pumpkin Patch we are surrounded by tons of families with kids. Our little family which includes little Tinkerbell as our kid looks a bit out of place. But I say WHATEVER! This is our family and we deserve pumpkins too! I must admit that Tinkerbell is a HUGE hit at the patch. Tons of people stopped us to ask if they could pet her and to say how beautiful she was. All I could do was smile with pride.

This particular patch gives you a wagon when you arrive in order to help carry this pumpkins. I’m not sure if it was like this when I was little, but they charge $2 per person to get into the farm??? I don’t even know what that includes?? This pumpkin patch is cute. They have a whole playground area, a place where kids can take pony rides, a hay ride, and the new addition was the potato sling shot. This place is going to be great when we have kids…but unfortunately for now Tinkerbell can’t fully enjoy all the farm has to offer.

 While going through the patch we encountered one of those cut out boards where you stick your head through so you look like that person or animal…well my husband and I decided to torture our dog. Hey, she’s our baby…we get to take cute pictures of her too!!! Ya ok, I know….we are dorks..lol

Other than the pumpkins our favorite thing to buy here is the cider donuts. YUMMY! If you have never tried a cider donut I highly recommend them. We also bought apples so I could make an apple crumb pie, (It came out really good by the way!) and apple cider!

I guess I should’ve added this little tradition in my previous post about Family Traditions. Little by little we are starting to build up little things that are special to us as a family. I know that this one will be even more fun once we have children. For now, it’s just the three of us…

I live a bit of a distance from my family. This is hard. I also live extremely close to my husbands family, and although it’s great to have family close by, I find myself jealous of the fact that we get to participate in their family traditions more than we get to celebrate with my family’s traditions. So far in our first year of marriage I think we accomplished our holiday schedule very well, and we both did a little give and take….but throughout this year, I don’t think we found any tradtions that were “OURS”.

I hear from others that once children are involved traditions will change and mold to be what’s best for you. This makes perfect sense, but how do we make it work for us as well as both of our families? I’m sure this is a problem most newlyweds face. Especially ones who are both close to their families. Maybe the idea is to think outside the box. Traditions don’t have to be only about holidays. So here are a few ideas that I have about what could be considered, or may be considered tradition in the future.

• Anniversaries: For the past 8 years my husband and I have always took time out to celebrate our anniversary. First we celebrated the anniversary of when we started dating. Then we celebrated the anniversary of the day we got engaged (which is Valentine’s day so he got off easy on that one) and now we look forward to celebrating our wedding anniversary. This year we are taking a small trip to Newport Rhode Island, and I hope that in the years to come we continue to celebrate our anniversary.
• Birthdays: Every year on each of our birthdays my husband and I take each other out to dinner. This is a day that we get to choose to eat wherever we want. Because I am the picky eater my husband normally gets jipped on where we go to out to eat…so on his birthday he always takes advantage and takes me out to his favorite restaurant which is in Manhattan. It’s called Shabu Tatsu and it’s Japanese food…I personally don’t like it, but hey it’s his birthday!

OK…so it’s not much but it’s something. A start! I guess we have years and years ahead of us to create our family traditions. It’s all just a part of the journey of marriage.

So what are some of your family traditions? Maybe I could steal some and make them ours!