Our Traditions

Well better late than never. Another great Christmas season has come and gone at the White house. We hope your Christmas was merry and bright and that it is one you will always remember. We have a few fun traditions here at the White house. For many years my side of the family would spend Christmas Eve at my parents, but since both of my parents have passed away we have started some tradtions of our own. First we ride to the cemetary and place candles on our loved ones graves, this was started some years ago here in the city. What a beautiful sight at night, so peaceful and calm. The wind was blowing a little hard that night so I don't know if our candles made it through the whole night or not. Then we come back here and have dinner which consists of Ebleskievers, bacon, fruit and an aray of other yummy treats. Ebleskievers are a little Danish pancake that are made in a special cast iron pan in the shape of round balls. Then you roll them in powdered sugar and serve with jam. The kids have always loved these and I had started a tradition to make them on the Sunday night before Christmas, well we just moved it to Christmas Eve. I'll share the recipe at a later time. I think you would like them.

Stuart and I in the kitchen getting ready to make the Ebleskievers.

This year for Christmas the kids wanted us to open their present on Christmas Eve. What a great surprise. They had a book put together of the years happenings. Needless to say there were a few tears as I read the nice letters they included in the book. This is something we will cherish for a long, long time. I think I have looked at it more than once or twice since Christmas Eve. Thanks kids for such a nice gift, that is the best.

Another tradition that has been in the White house for years is the opening of one gift, yup you guessed it. PJ's are the happening thing on Christmas Eve. Kira's kids had opened theirs up earlier in the day at the Carter party. Kids love new jammies don't they?

Karas and Santa, Thayne and Hatch in front of the Christmas tree here at our house. They got to open new slippers that night.

Jacob and his new pj's. He probably thinks he's to old for this, not? Even me and Stuart get new jammies too. The pj's Stuart picked out for me this year were really cute and they are so warm too! I know many of you have this same tradtion at your house.

Then after the kids are nestled into the new pj's we read a Christmas bedtime story. I got this idea years ago from my big sister. We all recieve that same book and I write a little message in it and the year it was read. The kids have quite a collection of Christmas books. I try to find some kind of ornament to represent the book, this year our story was The Miracle of the Wooden Shoes. I found some homemade wooden shoes from a litte shop out of Texas on the internet. What a beautiful story, if you get a little time in the next few days, pick it up and read it to your family. I usually watch for the sales after Christmas to get the books for the next year.

Christmas morning, after opening our gifts here we headed to Kira and John's to watch the kids open gifts and have breakfast. We have had "lacey" eggs as long as I can remember. My dad would fix us breakfast every Christmas morning when we would go down there. Kira loved my Dad's eggs, so this is one tradition she wanted to keep doing. Stuart is now the master chef of our breakfast and my Dad's famous "lacey" eggs.

Later Christmas afternoon those who can, gather back at the Whitehouse for the annual ham and potatoes dinner. Is that all we do over the holidays is eat. Of course we do, where's there's family there's food! We hope you have some fun family tradtions of your own, and you enjoyed them just as much as we did ours. It seems that it goes by all to quickly and in another year we'll be doing it all again. I can't wait.