10 Christmas Memories--Listicles Style

I'm jumping back on again with Stasha's Listicles, a day or two late, but whatever.  If you don't read Stasha's blog or follow her on instagram, you should.  She's all famous now with her Purina commercial that aired during the dog show on Thanksgiving.  I feel like they are my friends since I've been following her for a couple of years now.  I knew exactly who it was when it aired.  Even my kids knew: Mom!  It's that boy with his dog! 

She takes fabulous photos of her dogs and kid and is so fun to follow her life in pictures.  Northwest Mommy.  Check it out.

Anyway, on to the Listicles.  10 Christmas Memories.  Typically my memory about stuff like that is horrible but I'll see if I can come up with 10.  Here goes.

1.  I can remember as a kid that we would barely sleep and wake up at 5:00 a.m. to open presents.  It was always done by 5:30 and then we dragged ass for the rest of the day.  Which brings me to #2...

2. By 2:00 in the afternoon my mom would likely need a break from us so she always made us go take a nap.  In the middle of the day!  On Christmas!  Oh god I hated it.  I would cry and cry, but she would not give in and eventually I fell asleep.  And she would get her peace.

3.  We would always have aunts, uncles, Grammies, cousins--everyone! over to our house on Christmas Eve for a huge dinner.  My cousins and I would eat dinner and then while all the adults were sitting around talking, we would quietly slip out and go find somewhere to hide/play so we would get out of doing the dishes.  Later on my cousin, Paul, and I would always play cribbage.  And he would always win.  Year after year.  I don't think I ever beat him.

4.  I had never seen the Nutcracker in any form (ballet, tv, book) until 3 years ago when my daughter was in it.  Really didn't even know what the story was about.  To be honest, I'm still a bit confused with the story line.

5.  For the first 7 years that we were married we never had a Christmas tree.   I don't really love Christmas and I never saw the point of putting up a tree if we were going to be driving all over New England to visit people.  When we finally decided to stay home for the kids, I grudgingly agreed to put up a tree.

6.  One year I got my class ring for Christmas.  That was nice, but I wanted a computer.  It was a bit of a let down.

7.  Last year was the first year that I wasn't up until 11 p.m. wrapping gifts.  Somehow, I had them all wrapped ahead of time and we just had to bring them out from their hiding spots and put them under the tree.  It was awesome.  Probably will never happen again. 

8.  The only Christmas that I really have felt very little stress and maybe even enjoyed just a little, was 1999 when my first daughter was born in November.  I was on maternity leave for the remainder of the year and was able to take her with me shopping at off times when no one was at the mall.  I got everything done with any time crunch. 

9.  My tree comes down either Christmas afternoon or the day after.  Last year I had to work the day after Christmas and my kids and the sitter undecorated the tree, put all the ornaments away, and the sitter even dragged the tree out of my house and into the woods!  #sitteroftheyear  That was seriously the best present ever. 

10.  Everyone has their own stocking stuffing tradition.  In my house, the stockings are always filled by Santa and filled with little fun stuff like gum, shampoo, chapstick, candy etc.  My husband always wants to add shit that he finds in the cupboard.  Like old nuts or noodles or a can of corn.  He thinks it's incredibly funny.  I think it's incredibly stupid.  So I go behind him and remove that shit.  Does he really think the kids want a f'n can of corn in their stocking?  Dumb. 

I love to hear what everyone's stocking traditions are.  Do you have a special one that is different than usual?  Share it!  I hear one the other day where each person has a stocking and all the gifts are tied together with string and you follow it around the house, kinda like an elf trail, I guess?  That was a new one.


Feel free to share your Christmas memories!  Link up with Northwest Mommy at the link above.