25 Days of Christmas: Day 1

For day 1 of my 25 days of Christmas I'm going to write about my family's Christmas traditions. My mom isn't terribly sentimental about anything so we don't actually have too many. One thing that we've done every year (except once when we were in Vail, CO for Christmas) is get a real Christmas tree from Pam's trees. We always go to the same place in the evening and pick out a tree. I usually find the best ones. Then we take it home and my dad and I will decorate it while my mom watches and critiques us. She isn't very helpful. We used to use a bunch of random old ornaments that my parents had collected over the years but a few years ago my mom decided she wanted all of our tree decorations to coordinate so we bought all new stuff. We use white lights and we have silver bead things we string around the tree. All of the ornaments are blue and silver and shiny or sparkly. It looks really pretty all lit up. We also have a stuffed gator in a Santa costume, and a ceramic manger scene that we set up every year along with a snow globe that a family friend gave me for Christmas when I was younger. Every year my mom and I bake Chocolate chip cookies and ginger snaps, and we always argue about making them. My dad and I like to watch Home Alone 1 & 2 every year, and I like to watch Love Actually. On  Christmas eve we will usually watch something as a family and then in the morning I'll wake up and put cinnamon rolls in the oven. We have them every year on Christmas morning. Then at a reasonable hour I go wake up my parents and we each open our stockings. We go one at a time, and I usually start followed by my mom and then my dad. I organize everyone's presents into piles and then I open my presents first and we open presents in the same order that we opened stockings. Then we usually watch Gilmore Girls all day. That's our Christmas! I'll be back tomorrow for Day 2!