I do realize it’s already the 5th of January and many people have popped the New Year’s Eve champagne cork, taken down the Christmas tree and are tackling those new year’s resolutions already. Me. Not so much; at least not yet. At first I thought I was behind, but then a dear friend reminded me we are just on the 11th day of Christmas, so that does make me feel like I’m right on time. :0) The holidays always seem to go by so fast anyway, so any reason to keep them lingering around works for me. The kids have an extra long break this year, and while I’m in between work projects I really tried to be more present with them and not at my computer. Being present and in the moment is definitely something I put on my “Focus on in 2017” list. One of the other things I do want to be better at this year is sharing my story. Sometimes I don’t have time to blog, other times I let silly insecurities get to me. But, I realized even if no one reads this, it’s still a way to document our life for my kids. Not only is this blog a place to showcase my amazing photography clients, but also a place to show our every day life (and the way I capture it). I was recently reminded again that done is better than perfect, so here’s to imperfect progress at getting things done!

Christmas Traditions

One of our family Christmas traditions is baking and decorating sugar cookies. As you can see by the photos, these aren’t sugar cookies, but actually gingerbread. From a bag. I was really excited to try a new recipe that doesn’t have molasses in it because I was hoping they would taste like the Gingerbread cookies I remember making in my high school home ec. class. Yes, I realize that dates me. Yes, we still had home economics when I was in high school. Anyway, I remember making Gingerbread houses that year and the dough had a distinctly different taste than regular gingerbread. I had to put aside my expectations of scratch cookies and pulled out a few bags of cookie mix I had picked up on one of the endless shopping trips before the holidays. Honestly, I think they tasted just as great and really were a time saver. My mom had sent us her famous (in our family) decorated sugar cookies so I kind of took that excuse that we probably didn’t need to make our own too. :0) Kids seemed to buy it. I’ll guess we’ll save the new recipe for next year. Or can we make Valentine Gingerbread? Hmm..any excuse to bake…

I have many photos through the years of the kids helping make cookies with me as a Christmas tradition. This year B was big enough to do the cutting and transferring to the cookie sheet pretty much by herself. She even rolled it out as best she could. I couldn’t resist capturing her little hands with the cookie cutters. The days may seem long at times, but the years are flying by too fast. We started the cookies on Christmas Eve morning then left to celebrate with family. We usually go to Christmas Eve service earlier in the evening, but let’s just say getting stuck in snow in the church parking lot kind of makes you change plans. So, instead of getting in Christmas jammies and going to bed once we got home, the kids and I stayed up to finish our cookies then went to Midnight Mass. It was a beautiful service and I really enjoyed singing all the Christmas songs. Up until Christmas we’re in the season of Advent, so I was ready to belt out those hymns!

Sometimes I get caught up in what I think I have to do because we’ve always done it that way. I realized when I relax and just enjoy the moments, new and old Christmas traditions can provide for lots of memories.

What are some of your favorite holiday traditions?