Christmas Traditions

I can't believe I haven't posted anything in nearly a week. All I can say is that life has been moving at a rapid pace and time is something I have had little of. I don't have any photos uploaded so I won't be sharing a project today but I did want to ask you about your Christmas traditions. You can e-mail me instead of leaving them in the comment section if you want since the comment section can be rather difficult at times. We have several traditions a our list seems to be growing with our little girls, they can't get enough it seems. Every year we go to West Frankfort and visit Candy Cane Lane, this is a section of town in which every house is highly decorated and they usually have elves and Santa to guide you and give out candy canes. Yesterday we built our traditional Gingerbread house, aren't those kits nice, we didn't have those with my first kids and I had to bake my own gingerbread. We also celebrate Advent with an advent tree , reading of the Bible, lighting of the candles, and small inexpensive gifts each night starting 12 days before Christmas. I add a new ornament to the tree for each child every year, I really enjoy shopping for these, I try to choose one that kind of reflects and interest at that time or something to do with some job or sport they are each involved in. Then we have a special night where I will fix a bunch of snacks and bring out the ornaments and explain why I choose them and let the kids hang them. Something else I started with my older kids since I had one who used to sneak and open his presents under the tree and then rewrap them was to use secret code on the labels on the packages. They have so much fun trying to decipher the code and it is different each year so they rarely can figure it out. I would really like to hear about your traditions