Christmas Traditions: Shopping

I don't consider myself a "one-time" shopper when it comes to Christmas. I usually shop different places and for different people at several different times. There is one trip, however, that is a family tradition, and it's always my very favorite.

Every year since I can remember my mom has taken me (or I her) to Springfield to go shopping. For years she, my brother and I would all go shopping together as soon as we were out of school for break. When little Chloe came along, she went too. She went in my belly one year, she went in her carrier the next year, in her stroller the following year, and since then has been afoot with us.

We always leave early and shop all morning. We have lunch together somewhere yummy, then shop until dark, finally surrendering and making the long drive home. We switch things up from year-to-year, but one thing always remains true: we spend too much money have a blast!

In the last few years I have created the tradition of letting Chloe go to Build-A-Bear on this shopping trip. It's the only time she ever gets to indulge in the ridiculously high priced and baited sweet process of making her own stuffed animal. She looks forward to it all year and treasures each one she has created.

So it might be safe to say it was my mistake when I threatened her at lunch today. Yes, I figured if I threatened to take away her most exciting thing, she would eat those bites of protein I insisted upon. She jewed me down to "just one big bite," and without giving the detailed story, we ended our feud in the mall parking lot as she spit the rest of the chicken (she'd had in her mouth since we left Cheddar's) on the ground. The rest, you ask? What happened to the 'non' rest? It was spewed in specks around the car in a sneeze. Yeah.

So we entered the mall, the chicken not having been consumed, mad yet heart-broken Mommy, and bawling Chloe (for having lost her build-a-bear privilege). Oh, and a clearly distraught and traumatized Nana (who would NEVER punish her lol). After letting her grieve for an appropriate amount of time, I had to propose a deal.  I just COULDN'T take this from her. I just couldn't!

In the end, Little Missy ended up with no mall pretzel and having to fold all her clean clothes at home. She is currently snuggled up with her little Rudolph (who says "I'm cute, I'm cute!" and whose nose lights up). She thanked me endlessly for letting her "change her punishment," and vowed not to ask for one single toy all day. She worked long and hard on folding all those clothes, and she did it all by herself with a cheerful heart. She is such a good little girl and always makes me so proud, even when she's not been on her best behavior.

Today 'tradition' got the best of a soft-hearted Mama...and it was worth it :)

Christmas Traditions: Grandma

My granny, Mimi as we still call her, was a huge part of my life. She always lived right down the street from us, and all our holidays and summers were filled with days spent at her house. She is a marvelous cook, an excellent seamstress, and I'm pretty sure she was BORN to be a grandma. She's just everything in a granny you could possibly want. This made our holidays with her even more special. There are three things that stand out in my mind when I think of Christmas traditions with my granny, though there are many more I could write about. We won't even mention putting up her tree and nativity, the Christmas morning phone call to see what Santa got us, or going to her house as soon as we were dressed for presents and dinner, because those are a given ;)

Christmas Presents
Every year my granny would take me shopping a couple weeks before Christmas. Not so much when I was a little kid, but once I became interested in clothes (6th grade and on). We would go to Maurices, JCPenney, and Stage and I would shop all afternoon. I'd try on everything for her, and then show her the things I liked best. She'd send me to the car, and she would then purchase some (or all) of the items. She'd bring them to the car, we'd go get ice cream and head home. If there was time in the day she would box them up while I watched t.v. then I would help her wrap all the presents, including my own. I don't really remember many of the things she bought me, but I will always remember our shopping/wrapping extravaganzas!

FOOD!
I think this tradition started when my dad left, though I'm not for sure. Anyway, a few days before Christmas my Mimi would take my brother and me (objective form, folks, so it's not "I") to the grocery store. We would get a cart, and we would go up and down EVERY aisle. We were allowed to get ANYTHING we wanted. She made sure we had plenty of fruit, and she'd suggest lunch meats and practical things. What was the most fun for us, though, was that we were allowed to get things Mom just couldn't buy on a regular basis. We each got our own kind of soda, our own kind of chips, our own cereal, our own ice cream. We got crackers and cookies and Fruit Roll-Ups. Anything we wanted was ours. We never went crazy (like getting ten kinds of ice cream or anything), but we always ended up with several boxes of our favorite foods and treats. It was one of my favorite things about the holidays!

Monster Cookies
When I got older, my granny got the recipe for Monster Cookies. You know, the cookies that use something like a dozen eggs and eight cups of oatmeal? I would go down early one morning (early for me is nine, guys) and we would work our muscles mixing the enormous batch of dough. We would bake (and nibble) all day long, boxing up dozens as they cooled, then went around delivering cookies to our family and her friends. Monster cookie day was one of my favorite days. It was something different, not really "traditional" Christmas baking, that we made into our very own Christmas tradition.

Looking back on the things that became special traditions for me makes me excited to see what traditions will be created for Chloe over the next several years. Sometimes the best traditions aren't the ones you force, but the ones that just happen.

Christmas Traditions: Siblings

I'm sitting here crunching Halloween M&Ms that I stealthily swiped from Chloe's hidden stash. The past twenty four hours have been awful. Nothing catastrophic or blogworthy. Just one of those days when anything that can go wrong does. Are you starting to believe in Andrea's Law yet?

I've been wanting to do some Christmas tradition blogs, so I thought I would start that mini series today and try to lift my (Christmas) spirits a little. If that doesn't work I may have to find some other 'spirits.' Ha ha I kid.

If you have a Christmas tradition with your sibling(s), I hope you'll blog about it and link up :) It will be fun to read the other traditions going on out there! If you don't blog, go ahead and leave a comment. I look forward to reading some more sibling traditions!

It's no secret that I LOVE my bubby. He's pretty much my favorite family member, and without him I couldn't have survived MANY family functions. Ok I could have survived, but it wouldn't have been nearly as bearable.

If you knew me in my younger days, however, you know that this has not always been my feeling toward my brother. I always loved him, yes. But I didn't always like him. Most of the time we were fighting. I was verbal, he was physical. I'd lash at him until I provoked him, then hide in my room while he tried to bust the door off the hinges...ahhh those were the days. :)

Anyway, despite our usual fighting, there were a few occasions on which we called an unspoken truce. Those included visits or family functions on my dad's side, adventures with baby-sitters, and holidays.

The proverbial white flag was waved as the sun set on Christmas Eve. We would exchange our gifts to each other, and realize that maybe we liked each other just a little. A LITTLE. We'd then go about the events of the evening. Usually church service, and sometimes we'd have Christmas with our dad before church started. When church was over we'd come home and get ready to go to bed.

Every year we took turns sleeping in each other's rooms. We'd drag out our sleeping bags and sleep in the same room. Usually one of us had twinkly lights up, and we'd stay up late talking about Santa, about what we wanted to get, and about what to do when we woke up ("if you wake up first, wake me up"). I don't even know how our tradition got started, but we kept it going until I hit my teen years.

I'd nap off and on, never really sleeping, always checking the clock (we weren't allowed up before six). I'd get up to go to the bathroom several times and check to see if Santa had come. Knowing I wasn't allowed in the living room until morning, I'd stand in the hallway and squint, trying to make out any new shapes in the dim tree lights. As soon as six rolled around I'd say, "Hey, are you awake?" He was a heavy sleeper, but in his younger years he always got up for Christmas. We'd get Mom and head to the living room for presents.

By the time we were in the car to go to my grandma's we were probably arguing again, but for a brief time it was fun to get along.

While we didn't always get along, I'm so glad we have great memories scattered throughout our childhood. It was one of my favorite Christmas traditions. Just don't tell him that ;) Do you and your sibling(s) have Christmas traditions, or did you when you were kids? Comment below, or blog about them and link up! Hurry, the Linky closes at midnight Wednesday night!