{"id":16523,"date":"2018-12-21T11:49:25","date_gmt":"2018-12-21T16:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/?p=16523"},"modified":"2018-12-21T11:49:25","modified_gmt":"2018-12-21T16:49:25","slug":"starting-holiday-traditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/starting-holiday-traditions\/","title":{"rendered":"Starting Our Own Holiday Traditions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Wrapping<\/p>\n

Like most people, I love the holiday season and look forward to it all year long. The decorations, the lights, the music, the movies, the cookies, the spirit…did I already mention the cookies? It’s hugely important to me to create family holiday traditions. Now, James is only three months old, so this year is really a tradition test run for Daniel and me. So far we’ve celebrated Hanukkah with Daniel’s family, strung up an unsightly amount of decorations, got our holiday cards in the mail by the skin of our teeth, baked and decorated cookies, and most meaningfully, I introduced James to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” (breathe easy, he loves it).<\/p>\n

\"James

can you tell he already needs therapy to cope with me?<\/p><\/div>\n

Last Christmas, we began buying a special ornament to commemorate the year in the hopes that someday we’ll have one of those amazing family Christmas trees with a hundred or so special\/funny\/homemade ornaments. Our first ornament was one we got in Maui on our honeymoon that appropriately says “Just Maui’d.” This year, Daniel\u2019s nana sent us the cutest 2018 ornament with a picture of James inside and my friend Melissa<\/a> sent us this beautiful handmade ornament engraved with James’ name, birthdate, weight, and length. So special. Daniel also suggested getting duplicate ornaments every year and storing them so that we can give them to James when he’s an adult and has a tree of his own, which makes me tear up to even think about.<\/p>\n

\"Just<\/p>\n

Traditions we’d like to start as a family<\/h3>\n
    \n
  • Drive around town to see all the Christmas lights<\/li>\n
  • Bake and decorate cookies (a tradition we started last year with my sister-in-law and best friend)<\/li>\n
  • Visit Santa (I think this is more for me than for James)<\/li>\n
  • Watch Christmas movies (Elf, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Christmas Vacation, and about a million others)<\/li>\n
  • Volunteer to help people in need (at a soup kitchen, food bank, or by sponsoring a family)<\/li>\n
  • Bake a special treat to have for breakfast on Christmas morning (my best friend Kate and her family do this)<\/li>\n
  • Wear matching pajamas on Christmas Eve (does this border on too much? I love the idea of it)<\/li>\n
  • Read \u2019Twas the Night Before Christmas together (we read a book to James every night so this should be easy)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    I\u2019d love to hear some of the family traditions you loved as a kid or ones you’ve created with your own children!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Like most people, I love the holiday season and look forward to it all year long. The decorations, the lights, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[999],"tags":[381],"class_list":["post-16523","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-holiday"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}