Christmas With The Beckles
How important are the holidays to you? When kids are involved, doesn’t it make the entire experience a lot more fun? Are there any traditions your family carry throughout this time of year? Well for me, this time of year means everything. As soon as November hits, I am in full Holiday Spirit! Christmas carols, egg nog, spice cookies, pretty lights and reindeer ears are hands down some of my favorite things about the holidays. Starting mid-December you can catch me on Snapchat with my reindeer ears taking selfies and making videos singing “This Christmas” and happily my baby boy Cam is right there with me basking in the spirit while my husband isn’t too far away laughing at how ridiculous we look. Every year I am able to spend the holidays being a mother, well this is only my second year, but it makes me forever grateful and my heart full. Full enough to not care about receiving gifts and just be more excited about setting the tone surrounded by a beautiful Christmas tree, personalized stockings, the perfect wrapping paper with lots of bows, glitz and glam and my personal favorite, Candy Canes.
The opportunity to create memories with my family, show my son the meaning of Christmas as well as express to him how much this holiday means to me and how much it will forever mean to our family is priceless. Now that he is a year and a half we can do activities that he can learn from and really enjoy. Having my own family is something very new and I want to start traditions that last a lifetime or until the kid(s) get tired and no longer want to participate and began asking for money and only come over for gifts and dinner. Until that time comes, every Christmas I plan to be the most annoying mom I can be, I plan to be super obnoxious when Christmas comes around. I plan to attend every holiday show at school with all the bells and whistles. I plan to use this time as productively as possible to make sure I get all of the cutest pics to embarrass the kid(s) with when they get older, dress my son in ugly Christmas sweaters as long as I possibly can, take a million pictures by the tree, and wear matching holiday PJS Xmas eve. We will wear Christmas hats, sing songs, and bake cookies and all of those “in the holiday spirit” activities. My husband may not be totally into it, my son doesn’t really have a say so it looks like mommy is the boss this go around. This year I created 8 days of Christmas, we will countdown the days until Christmas by doing something each day related to the holiday “Beckles Style”. Who’s ready?
Disclaimer: These activities did not go as smoothly as planned. Some days were messier than I expected them to be. Some Cam was completely not interested in but all in all, happy baby, happy mommy which means happy husband & very Merry Christmas!
· Day 1 – Random act of kindness; anyone in Philadelphia knows that when downtown you will see an alarming number of homeless people. This one particular evening while my family and I were shopping we witnessed a man sitting on a vent outside. The temperature was below 30. We decided to stop at the café’ and buy him a hot tea and a meal. Needless to say he was very thankful. Cam is way too young to understand, but this is something that my family does regularly so it will hopefully be something that sticks!
· Day 2 – This day was a bit selfish on my end but it’s becoming a tradition. I’m obsessed with ugly Christmas sweaters so this fed my own creative hunger. I stopped at the local dollar store, spent about $15 on supplies, found some sweatshirts and got creative. Cam was right there assisting as much as he could, making a mess, tearing apart cotton balls, you know the usual of 1.5 year old.
· Day 3 – To bring out the creative side and to get lil man’s mind twirling, we decided to make Christmas ornaments. I cut out snowflakes attached it to a string and let the kid design them himself. Not going to lie here, he was more interested in emptying the crayons repeatedly out of the box then coloring. I did more coloring than he did! However, when it came down to attaching the ribbon it and letting him hang them on the tree, he was excited. This will be a tradition definitely carried into next year.
· Day 4 – To embody the spirit of giving, I definitely want to instill in my son that it is always much better to give than to receive. On day 4, we bagged up a bunch of toys that were never touched and some that are still fresh in the box. We decided to drive it over to our local goodwill.
· Day 5 – On the fifth day of Christmas we spent time making reindeer food, we combined oatmeal with blue glitter sprinkles and on Xmas eve we will sprinkle the fairy dust on the steps so it will get the attention of the reindeers so they can stop at our house to bring Cam his gifts. Let’s just say, it got a bit messy but little boys like mess so the end result was a very happy kid.
· Day 6 – Throughout December we always watch Christmas movies. Usually it’s one of my choices, “This Christmas”. However since I am a mommy now we spent the evening watching “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”. Cameron like his mama thought The Grinch was hilarious. Hot chocolate, cookies, cuddling and fleece blankets (which Hubby hates) were in full effect.
· Day 7 – Twas the night before Xmas, we baked sugar cookies at grandmas for Santa with the entire family. We read the “The Story of Christmas” and relaxed in our PJs until it was bedtime for the lil boss baby. Right after 8 pm, it was “Wine” down time for me.
· Day 8 – Christmas day at Grandmas! Cam was completely unbothered by all the gifts underneath the tree. He actually bypassed the tree and ran straight into the kitchen. Apparently he likes to eat more than open presents. We all pitched in to make breakfast for the family. Orange juice for the kiddies and mimosas for the grown folks. We were just thankful to be able to spend this time in PA before our move next week to North Jersey.