Christmas in Durham 2017

Because we travel at Christmas, we try to squeeze in a few Christmas-y things at our home in Durham before we hit the road. Since we get to see both sides of our family each Christmas, we get to keep our respective childhood Christmas traditions and rituals in tact, which is so fun and homey. And, since we've been doing our own Christmas in Durham for the last few years, we've developed a few fun traditions of our own that we've come to love. 

This year, because Claire is in preschool, we got to experience our first year of school Christmas-ing:

That's Claire in the foreground (red sweater, Santa hat).

Lily enjoyed getting to participate in Claire's party! This was the only moment I wasn't pulling her off of something.

We had a teensy bit of a snow fall, and the girls took advantage of it!

They refused to take off their snowsuits for half an hour when they came in.

Our first (or maybe second...can't quite remember) year in Durham, we took Claire to the Santa Train experience at the museum. It was kind of expensive, and she only sort of liked it, so we decided not to do it the next year. Instead, we just went to the museum during the day (the official Santa train activities are at night), paid less for all of us than it cost for one of us to do the actual Santa train, and she had an absolute blast. This was our third year to do that, and it's still working like a charm.

Posing while we wait.

Whole train to ourselves!

It was so cold. It was probably 20 degrees before the train started chugging, so the girls were super bundled.

After we did the Santa train (all of the decorations that are used for the actual Santa train are still up during the day; they're just not lit/moving/etc.), we did the Dino Walk. Obviously.

If you don't pose with the dinosaur replicas on your family Christmas outing, are you really doing it right?

Visiting the bunnies. Bunnies are Lily's favorites.

She also really enjoyed the alpacas. She cried when we walked away, and we consoled her by stopping to see the pygmy goats (not pictured, sadly).

We love getting Christmas cards, and usually, I hang them from the garland that I wrap around our banister, but the garland didn't happen this year, so taped-to-the-mantle it is! 

P.S. If you send us a Christmas card, we keep it all year in a stack on our dining room table and pray through them at meal times.

Because of all the traveling, we open our family gifts on a special "Christmas Day" that we appoint before we leave town. We do a festive "Christmas Eve" of fancy appetizer foods + a movie before bed and then get up and do presents, special breakfast, and lounging/playing for the day, as if it was actually Christmas morning. I've come to love this tradition so so much.

Opening her stocking. Note: when Brad and I got married, I made our stockings. Then, when Claire was born, I made hers. Then I made Lily's. I'm realizing the flaw in my plan as I'm continuing to add "make stocking" to my to-do list. Bless it.

Out of curiosity, what do y'all put in stockings? We do toothbrush/toothpaste, small snacks they don't normally get, and a few treats. This year, Claire got a mini slinky and a Thomas the Train t-shirt that I found on clearance for $2 at Target. Lily got snacks, tooth stuff (you know, for her five teeth), bubbles, and new sippy cups.

Here's a action shot of Claire's Thomas shirt. It's from the boys' section but whatever.

We got the girls one joint gift (a Thomas the Train pop-up tent) and one individual gift each. Claire got a set of 2 remote control cars (she wanted a remote control robot that would clean up her toys, but she was pretty happy with this option), and Lily got two sets of the Color Wonder markers + coloring books. GUYS. This was magic. She literally colored in them for an hour and a half straight (I timed it). I'm always keeping some on hand from now on. She can't be trusted with regular markers or crayons, but these markers will only color on special paper, so it removes most of my stress (she did bite off the tip of one of the markers, so it's not an entirely stress-free process).

Coloring with new sippies in the foreground.

"Robot" cars

Thomas!

Sharing. We have one lefty and one righty.

This is where Lily "hides" when she doesn't want to do something. This time, she took her new coloring supplies with her.

We had a great time celebrating Christmas (and Advent, although that's not pictured here) this year. Looking forward to more years of small family Christmases before the big family celebrations on the road!