Traditionnn...Tradition!

   Welcome to 2012, everyone!  Even though Christmas is over, I thought it would be nice to share a few of our Christmas traditions.   Two of our favorites are decorating the tree and making pretzels for our neighbors.
   First of all, we get a REAL tree.  This is very important to us... we pick it out together and it always makes the house instantly turn Christmasy when we haul it into the house and the pine-needle smell fills the living room.  We use a homemade felt tree skirt and our collection of ornaments.  Atop the tree is perched an angel that Mama and Daddy bought in Maine before any of us were born!  We put on Christmas music and decorate the tree.
   Every girl goes into her own decorating zone.  Sarah puts her favorites and the prettiest ones on the tree, and gets done pretty quickly.  Anna wants to get as many ornaments hung as possible and be done with it as quickly as possible.  I take my time and am in my own little world of remembering.  I put mine all over the tree, making sure each part is decorated.  Mary Claire is systematic and puts on her favorites but doesn't waste time.  She knows when to stop and is usually finished first, or second to Anna.  Mama and Daddy love to watch and give suggestions or join in on the reminiscing.  What I love about our tree is that every ornament has a story.

Dancing with Tucker!

Never too old to dance on Daddy's feet.

Daddy playing the Hershey kisses bells.

Already finished and relaxing, of course. 

Anna and my first Christmas!  And Sarah's is the Precious Moments one to the left.

    Now that the tree's all decorated, on to our next tradition...white-chocolate-pretzel-making!  Every year we make white-chocolate-covered pretzels for our neighbors and deliver them to everyone on our street.  We have been told that our neighbors enjoy them and we enjoy the time spent making them!  By now we are a well-oiled pretzel-making machine.

Every girl takes a corner of the wax paper and we work until there is no room or pretzels left!

Mama supervises and Daddy eats.

The finished product!  These go into bags that we hand-decorate.

   Usually Mama drives us down the street and we all ride in the trunk and hop out at each house.  This year Anna manned the wheel and we brought Tucker to escort us.  We persevered through the cold (it was Christmas Eve) and left surprises on our nieghbors' porches.  A few days later we ran into one of our neighbors.  She thanked us for the pretzels and said that her husband had been afraid that we had outgrown the tradition.  We answered, "Of course not!"  It takes effort and planning to get these traditions done (especially now that 3/4 of the sisters are at college), but they are important and we enjoy them year after year!  Here's to another year of old and new traditions!