Friday's Fave Five

Time for Susanne's weekly meme, Friday Fave Five a chance to reflect and pick five things from this past week that make us happy.

Friday Five Christmas Edition

1. Christmas is one of my favorite holidays. I have so many wonderful memories of years past. I was very blessed with a mother who had a love for baking and she handed that down to me. One of the things I will always remember and treasure is mom making cut out Christmas cookies with us kids. She would roll the dough and then let us use the metal cookie cutters that she had to cut various shapes. Then we got to decorate our own cut outs. Over the years I have searched for cookie cutters just like my mom's so I could share that same tradition with my kids.This year was no exception, and the kids loved being a part of making Christmas cookies for Santa.

2. I love getting Christmas cards! What a joy it is to catch up with friends scattered all over the US, and some overseas. What joy it brings me to sit with my coffee and read Christmas letters, find out the latest news and see how everyone's kids have grown and changed!

3. Christmas Baking is a high priority on my list. Not only do I make the cut out cookies with the kids, but I also bake a ton of other goodies. Although this year I cut back on the goodies a lot, the one tradition I couldn't let go of is making Fudge just like my mom did. I made the recipe handed down to me from my Mom and Grandmother. As I made this recipe this year there was a sense that Mom was watching over me and giving me her seal of approval for carrying on this tradition.

4. There have been many Christmas Eve traditions in my life over the years. When I got married I/we incorporated the traditions that were important to my husband as well. Some of our traditions include Christmas Eve service, Christmas Eve dinner, ornament exchange, Christmas Eve P.J.'s, Reindeer food, reading several Christmas stories before bed while sipping hot chocolate. It's fun for us to keep this magic alive in our family. What a blessing to see the traditions instilled in us as kids are carried on to our children.

5. Ornament Tradition. My mom actually started this tradition. Every year one of our gifts was a Christmas Tree ornament. Her intend was that when it came time for us to leave home we each had at least 20 ornaments to put on our own trees. This has been a fun tradition in our family from the time my kids were born. The only thing I do different is that each ornament represents something significant to each child during the year. This year's ornaments were representing each of the kids costumes from Halloween.