Christmas with the Carters

During the holidays, my family has traditions coming out our ears. But these are the things that we hold near and dear. Each year as we bake sweets all week, wrap presents in Santa's super secret workshop (the garage), and have carols playing all throughout the house; the familiar Christmas feeling just creeps in. My favorite thing each year honestly is the time spent with my family. Now that I'm a technical adult, I don't see everyone as much as I would like. Between work, college, and just the daily drudgery of life each year flies by quickly. I haven't seen my relatives in Oklahoma since last Christmas. A whole year! I have done a much better job this year of keeping in contact though through regular emails and phone conversations. This blog also helps to share my life with my friends and family all over. I just want to take some time to share some of my favorite traditions and hopefully some holiday cheer.

Mom's (Denise) homemade Christmas stockings- this tradition started way back when she was in college and tried out a pattern for her sister. Now it has developed into a tradition of making a personalized stocking for each new addition and matching stockings for each newlywed couple. My own stocking is of course my favorite. The pattern actually has cute little stockings on it.

Grandma's (Patsy Carter) breakfast casserole- I'm not sure when this particular tradition took shape because we've done it since before I was around. Every Christmas Eve Grandma whips up a couple of casseroles to set overnight. In the morning as we're opening gifts (which usually takes between 2-3 hours) they bake. When we're done, we have a hot yummy breakfast.

Christmas Caper- We started this bakc in the early 1990's while in the Ada Branch. Each FHE night during December we bake a variety of cookies as a family and then arrange them nicely on plates. Then we all bundle up and drop them off as fellow church members houses. Secretly. We lay thme on the doorstep, ring the doorbell, and RUN. My favorite story is from the year we actually hit Nathaniel with the car (not very hard) trying to escape quietly.

Grandma's Tree- My grandparent's Christmas tree has always been my favorite. Complete with a homemade popcorn chain, a bright star in top, anda little train te circled underneath. It has looked pretty much the same since I was a kid. I remember we used to get scolded for crawling under it. It was really neat to lay underneath and look up and see it from the inside out.

The food-We have a ton of traditional foods. Too many to even begin to mention but one of my favorite things that we do for Christmas is our non-traditional Christmas Eve dinner. We've never had a ham, or potatoes, or any of the usual stuff. We've always gone south of the border. In the Carter household, we stuff ourselves with Mexican food. We always have a wide variet-all homemade of course. Everything from nachos, enchialadas, taco salad, etc.

Christmas carols- Now you'll never actually catch us caroling but on Christmas Eve we all pretend. As we sit around the living room with full bellies and a glowing Christmas tree we pull out some old sheet music and sing as a group. We forget the words a lot, we sing off key, and sometimes not all of us are even singing the same song. It's a fun way that we try to remember the reason for the season.