New Traditions

We have started a few new traditions this year, here at our house and are really excited about them.

The first one came about when I was sitting at my sister Erin's house, chatting with her and my other sister, Lucy. We were taking about our favorite things about Christmas and Erin mentioned that one year, her in-laws stuffed each other stockings. I thought it was a great idea and thought the boys would love to do it and that it would bring the "giving" element into our holidays. So, during FHE before Thanksgiving we had the boys exchange names and start "stocking" lists. The boys were excited and had tons of ideas. I was excited because it was one less stress on me and their stocking won't just be the same for each boy. This last Tuesday we headed over to Target to do their stocking shopping. AJ took 2 boys and I took the other 2. They all had soo much fun and bought such fun stuff! On the way home they were all excited to give their stockings to each other! It also helped AJ and I to get more into the Christmas spirit. Each stocking is soo unique and it is going to be so much fun for them to watch their brother open them!

Our second tradition is built on an old one. We like to get the boys new PJ's for Christmas Eve. This year we decided to make our own T-Shirts. As we were discussing this in FHE, AJ came up with a GREAT idea to make our own Family Crest! We all helped with the basic design, giving ideas and our opinions, and then AJ, the master that he is with computers, polished it up! We are really excited about them and the Crest turned out soo cool! The 3 words we chose for our Crest were: Brotherhood (for obvious reasons!), adventure, and unity. We picked a Falcon as our animal, AJ would love to learn to fly and a Falcon ties into the adventureness. AJ also included a star in it to represent me! :) We are going to just use iron-ons for right now, but we hope to get them silk screened eventually. I will post picture as soon as a have them!

I am so excited for Christmas this year. I have enjoyed shopping for the boys, they are each soo different and wanted such different things. I have almost all the wrapping done, I am just waiting for a few final things to come through UPS. (I ended up having to get about half of our gifts online and I loved it! Most sites were offering free shipping and were guaranteeing delivery by Christmas!) We are also excited for LJ's birthday 2 days before Christmas.

AJ and I got for our gift (with the help of Grandma and Grandpa Jackson's Christmas money) the new "Flip" video camera. We opened it and charged it last night, knowing we would want it for Christmas morning. (We will probably wrap it and open it, again, Christmas Eve!) We are really going to enjoy having it and it is so small that I know we will use it all of the time! So expect to see more video from us.

Happy Holidays to everyone! Enjoy your families and loved ones.