I am terrible at this, please forgive me.
Yesterday I learned that I am carrying yet another little boy and spent the rest of my day dancing around my living room; completely forgetting that it was Monday. Last week, I honestly don’t know what happened. 
As always, I apologize.
My family {my mother, sisters and I} never celebrated Christmas in it’s “traditional” sense. For my sister’s and I, Christmas meant that our begging all year was about to pay off. We were those obnoxious kids you don’t want yours to turn into. For my mother, Christmas meant mourning the loss of her own mother on Christmas Eve, many years before my birth. I believe that my mother felt she had to make up for her sadness, or lack of holiday enthusiasm, with gifts galore and super mega Christmas trees.
Now that I have children of my own, I am able to create my own traditions and celebrations.
What I’d like to take precedence is our family, love and togetherness. I want the kids to understand that while we may not celebrate as a lot of others do, we still have something special. I want them to appreciate what they have. I want them to relish in the real magic holidays bring. Eventually, I want them to build their own family’s celebrations based on what they had as children, as opposed to doing what I did and going in a completely opposite direction.
How do you make your holidays special? Do you have any traditions? What do you celebrate during this time of year? What did you celebrate when you were a child? How do you keep your holidays from being “commercialized” and superficial?
And lastly- Can someone tell me where the snow is? I have none here. 
I will be posting on Christmas Eve, I’ll keep it simple and make it early! :) However, I will be spending New Year’s Eve {my daughter’s fourth birthday} eating lots of junk, drinking sparkling white grape juice and watching the Twilight Zone marathon. 
There are no rules, just grab that button and play along! When you’re done, come back here and leave a link behind. I’ll be sure to thank you!! 
Have fun!!!
Monique is a young mom of two and a half, you can read more of her adventures in growing with her children at Rain Babies. Have any suggestions for Rainy Day Fun, send an email- monique{AT}seattlemomblogs.com!
One tradition that my family had that I’d like to carry on when we have kids (no kids currently but we are adopting soon) is our Christmas Eve dinner. We had meat and cheese fondue. It was so fun! My mom made a huge pot of a special cheese conglomeration and cut up bread chunks for dipping. Then we had a pot filled with oil and steak strips for cooking. She also had a plate of various veggies and a special dip to go with it that we only had on Christmas Eve.
I don’t know if you’ve ever done fondue but it makes dinner active and fun. We had a rule that if your food fell off your skewer and you lost it in the pot you had to kiss everyone at the table. Every single dingle year my dad would say, “How does this work? How do we do this?” and we’d have to teach him all over again. Then he would always do it “wrong” by cooking his bread in the oil and dipping his cooked steak in the cheese. That would always make us roar with laughter.
The other thing about the fondue dinner is that we ONLY did it on Christmas Eve. It was our special Christmas Eve dinner and we always looked forward to it. Just a couple of years ago my parents visited my husband and I for Christmas. We surprised them with fondue on Christmas Eve using the same exact recipes, only my husband just HAD to add dessert fondue - melted chocolate and fresh fruit for dipping. And I swear to god, my Dad did his usual routine - asked us how to do it but put his bread in the oil anyway.
I’ve never done fondue, but I really want to!
That is such a sweet tradition! Thank you for sharing it!!
I just blogged about our outing to the Sheraton’s gingerbread display. I hope checking out downtown’s offerings will be a new tradition for us!
You can see it here:
http://www.letthedogin.com/2007/12/22/friends-to-sink-your-teeth-into-a-gingerbread-village-in-seattle/