Christmas with the Crafts

So like most families we have our standard Christmas traditions. We have been doing these things for as long as I can remember. We always got our Christmas tree at Lowe's. The best part of a Lowe's tree is that you get free apple cider while you look. Then, I love how they send the tree through the little shoot that bundles it up. I am sure that they do this at every Christmas tree place, but I always thought it was special. Next, we would decorate the tree as a family. Sarah Margaret, Dennis, and I would choose which ornaments we wanted to hang. Our tree was, and still is, an eclectic mess. We definitely do not have a theme tree, or only pretty ornaments. Our ornaments are all the glitter explosion ones we made in elementary school. We also had some very nice ones that we constructed at McDonalds one year. The coveted ornament was a Rudolph whose mouth could open like a puppet. We would fight over who could hang it. Sometimes even after one of us had hung Rudolph, someone else would come along and move him.

Grandmama Ruth would come a few days before Christmas to celebrate with us. She was a staple in the leather recliner just sitting there crocheting for days. She would also help mom cook. Since I am the youngest child I always had to give up my bed. Aunt Diane would come for Christmas Eve so she would sleep in Sarah Margaret's bed. This meant that all three of us were in Dennis's room. We had a pretty sizeable collection of beanie babies, which are all for sale if you are reading this and are interested. So the three of us would go to bed and wait for Santa to come, which we knew was Dad all along, and we would hold our annual Beanie Baby Club meetings. We even had a theme song. It was to the tune of "We're From the Country and We Like it That Way." Usually we would get all thousand of the beanie babies set up for the meeting and then we would fall asleep before the actual meeting. I really don't know what we would have discussed.

Christmas morning was super exciting! We woke up usually before the sun came up and ran to get Mom and Dad. They would look at the clock and tell us to wait a little longer. Then, when it was time we had to gather at the top of the stairs. Mom would always make sure that we all had socks on. For some reason it was a family rule that we could not open presents unless we had socks on. I'm not sure what the correlation between covered feet and opening presents is. Once we all had socks and we waiting at the top of the stairs Dad would go make sure Santa came. He had already told us Santa is not real (if this is news for you, I am sorry that I ruined Christmas for you). Once Dad got downstairs and turned on Christmas music he would call us to come down. This is when the real excitement started. We would all sit on the stairs and race down on our butts. I never won. Then we would open our stockings and rip into our presents.

For breakfast every year we had waffles, eggs, grits, country ham, and orange danish. It was so delicious every time. The Craft family Christmas traditions are pretty standard, but they are part of who we are. This year all our traditions have been thrown out the window since Sarah Margaret got married. We are going to initiate Jonathan into the Beanie Baby Club next week, but I'm not sure all four of our butts will fit down the stairs at once. I think the race will be interesting.