This Saturday evening will be year four of Hailey’s annual Christmas Eve gift! She may not believe in Santa anymore, but the anticipation she does still have for the holiday keeps that special magic kids bring to Christmas alive. Her gifts also still say ‘from Santa’ anyway! My Mom did this for my brother and me; it still makes it fun and puts a smile on your face when opening gifts. Hailey started her Christmas countdown with around 65 days to go so as you can imagine she is getting giddy with excitement as we head into the last few days of the countdown! Each year she is allowed to open her Christmas Eve gift after 7:00 PM that evening. It will always includenew pajamas (with a bonus pair of slippers this year), something personalized, a sweet treat and something we can do as a family for the remainder of the night like games or a movie. Once she decided she was ‘too old’ for Justice clothes, I started buying her Christmas pajamas from Victoria’s Secret. I realize that might sound like quite the leap from the store Justice, but you can find cute and appropriate PJ’s at VS and they are (my) hands down the best out there! These PJ’s are comfy and well made! I get new ones for Christmas every year too from my parents and I’m always in need of new slippers by then, because my get worn from wearing them so often! If I could wear them to work in the Winter, I most certainly would! Quick tip – buy the pajamas early and take advantage of their slippers promotion where the slippers are free with purchase of pajamas!

I’ve ordered the personalized gift from personalizationmall.com every year! Nearly every product I’ve ordered from this company has been high quality meeting or exceeding my expectations. Quick tip in relation to this website – they have beautiful Christmas cards that are 40% every year around October and November! The personalized item proves to be the most challenging decision lately. In the past I’ve picked out a personalized popcorn bowl, ice cream bowl, hot cocoa mug and blanket. I was struggling a bit this year until I came across this mug that will work perfectly for a candy cane milkshake on Christmas Eve! As she gets older I’m thinking about personalized jewelry and keepsakes. A necklace with her small initial in real diamonds would be pretty, but we all know too well that such gifts require kids to be past the ‘lose everything’ age 🙂

For the ‘activity’ part of the gift this year I decided on a Christmas themed coloring book. This part of the gift becomes challenging too. We have almost every Christmas movie and countless board games and card games. I was browsing the Barnes and Noble website one day when I came across the Jingle Bells coloring book and a light bulb went off in my head. This may not seem like a perfect gift to outsiders, but I fell in love with the idea because one of my very first memories of Hailey involves coloring. She was 6, almost 7, when Allen and I started dating and coloring was her absolute favorite thing to do. When we were sitting in the living room at night watching TV she used to plop down beside me with her books and crayons and ask if I wanted to color. I always said yes. She colored hundreds of pictures to hand out to family members. I have several pieces of artwork that say ‘To: Sara From: Hailey’ or ‘To: Dad From: Hailey’. Those are tucked away with the letters and jokes she used to write to Santa! I’m looking forward to coloring this Christmas Eve and reminiscing over those times, re-telling stories like the time she ‘tattled on herself’ when she told me about her secret coloring book she would color in at night when she was suppose to be sleeping. 🙂

The final part of the gift, the sweet treat, is tiny this year – a small bag of delicious Ghirardelli chocolate! There’s good reason for this tiny sized treat. Not only will the candy cane milkshake easily meet our sugar quota for the day, she will surely be indulging in plenty of sweets earlier in the day as we celebrate Christmas with Allen’s family and have cookies, hot cocoa and oreo truffles to follow our savory dinner. How will we justify these eating habits when we can no longer say ‘Tis the Season’? 🙂

If you have any Christmas traditions of your own I’d love to hear about them in the comments below!! I hope you all have a wonderful holiday blessed with the opportunity to make new memories with friends and family. Enjoy!!

Oh, and for my dear friend Wanda, here’s a photo of our little Max with his Christmas Snoopy!

As always, thanks for reading!!