Mom Life with Adrienne

The holiday season is in full swing. I can't believe that Christmas is only 20 days away, I have so much shopping still to do, but no time without the kids. It will get done like always, and will be at the last minute. The fun part of the holidays is all the different traditions that we have as a family. This year we have 4 that we do everyday. Here is a little inside in our families daily Christmas traditions.

Who doesn't love a Christmas countdown. I have had one since I was little. It was a fabric calendar that had pockets for each day and a cute little cloth mouse that you would move each day. My sister and I would fight over who got to move the mouse. My mom still has that calendar to this day and hangs it up. 

This year my mom bought us a Merry Christmas magnetic countdown calendar to add to our home. Every morning Ella wakes up and moves the peppermint candy piece. 

We also have another countdown calendar I changed the date every day with a dry erase marker. GusGus, our Elf on the shelf brought it with him to his arrival day North Pole Breakfast.

Who doesn't love Chocolate? I always say you can make anything better with Chocolate. Ok everything but most things. Both my kids have advent calendars that we found at Target this year. Ella has Trolls and Austin has Star Wars. (there wasn't much to chose from). Each morning Ella has to look on the calendar and find the correct date. they are in a random order. Then she can open the door and eat the chocolate underneath. Ella also gets to find the date on Austin's calendar and give him his chocolate. This is the second year for this tradition. 

25 Days of Christmas. I know your thinking OMG she gets 25 presents before actually Christmas. Yes, but not really, kinda so. Each night under the tree (right now GusGus's tree that is on the table since our large Christmas tree is not up yet) a book appears and she gets to open it. That book is her bedtime story for that night. Since Ella goes to her fathers house every other weekend she gets the books she missed when she returns either on Sunday night if she is awake, or today she asked if she could open the books this morning, but tonight we get to read 4 books. This is possibly change once we start the tradition with Austin (next year). I haven't decided if they are going to share the books or if he gets his own books yet.

Now about the books. I started this tradition 3 years ago. I bought 25 Christmas books from different stores, Target, Goodwill, Ollies, Dollar Tree... we use most of those same books each year. I have swapped out a few that we didn't like, or she outgrew. Magically a few days after Christmas all this Christmas books just disappear aka get put away for next year. This was a wonderfully horrible pinterst find idea. We really love it. 

The last tradition we started when Ella was 1. I have previously mentioned it before, Gus Gus our elf on the shelf. You can read more about it HERE.

What are your holiday traditions?