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It is officially my favorite time of year, CHRISTMAS! I am one of those crazy Christmas people that likes to put up my Christmas tree before Thanksgiving and listen to Christmas music everyday. Everything about this time of year brings me so much joy, the decorations, the music, the warm gingerbread lattes, and my birthday happens to be a week after Christmas so that makes this month even more fun! When I think of Christmas and winter, I think of comfy scarves, hot chocolate, and snow (although I’ve never really lived in snow haha). Now that we live in Hawaii, it’s not exactly a winter filled with big scarves and snow, but that doesn’t mean we don’t still have that joyful Christmas feeling here in Kauai. I’m not a fan of cold weather, at least living in it, so I will say that it is pretty nice being able to walk around in shorts and go to the beach during the winter.
We kicked off this month by taking Mia to the big Christmas parade. The parade lasted about an hour and Mia was mesmerized the whole time! We also took her to see a Christmas light show that even I thought was pretty cool. It had fun music to go with the lights, so of course Mia liked it because she could dance the whole time. One of the coolest local Christmas traditions that I can’t wait to take Mia to this year, is when Santa paddles in on a canoe into Kalapaki Beach on Christmas morning! I’m happy to have so many fun holiday activities here in Kauai that we get to introduce Mia to. We recently took Mia to go meet Santa and well, if you saw on my Instagram you saw it didn’t go so well. She did great when we walked in and even gave Santa a high-five, but when she realized she had to actually sit with him, she lost it! We did get a pretty epic ‘crying Santa picture’ out of it though. I feel bad laughing at this photo so much, but you other parents have to admit that it makes for great memories to look back on when they get older! We figured we would give it one more try this week and got her dressed all pretty in her Christmas dress, I even put on one of my favorite Christmas shirts just in case I needed to get in the photo with her. This time she was on to us and the second we walked in the door she started screaming because she knew what was coming, we still tried, and well, we just got another epic crying picture!
Since we put her through so much torture, after her photos, we went and got her favorite smoothie for her and took her to play in our favorite spot by the river. Once she started running around and feeding the chickens she was in much better spirits and I think she started to forgive us haha.
If anyone is interested in my ‘Merry and Bright’ shirt that I have on below, you can click here. It’s from ILY Couture, which is one of my favorite websites. I honestly think I have a shirt for every holiday from their website. If you saw my pumpkin shirt on Halloween, that was from ILY Couture as well. Not only do they have the cutest holiday graphic tees, accessories, and regular everyday clothes, but they have kids clothes too! If you want to check out the rest of their Christmas Holiday collection, you can click here!
Now that Mia is old enough, we wanted to start some new Christmas traditions together as a family and carry on some traditions from both mine and Cijay’s childhoods. Since this is only our first year starting out these traditions with Mia, I’m sure we’ll develop even more throughout the years. I would love to hear what traditions you all have with your families! Here is a list of some of the ones that we can’t wait to start:
- Christmas Eve Present – When I was little I would always open one present on Christmas Eve night and it was always pajamas. I would wear them that night and I loved it! This year will be the first year we do this with Mia, I can’t wait!
- Christmas Tree – This will be a new tradition we start as a family. This year we put our tree up the day after Thanksgiving and we made a whole day of it. We all drank hot cocoa and let Mia help us put the ornaments on the tree. She is obsessed with the tree now, every morning she wakes up and runs over to the tree and points to it for us to turn the lights on. I’m all for starting Christmas as soon as we can, so I love the idea of putting the tree up the day after Thanksgiving!
- Christmas Cookies – Now that we live near our whole family, it so exciting that we can finally get all the cousins together during the holidays. This year will be the first year we are going to get all the kids together and decorate cookies and gingerbread houses!
- Mia’s mini Christmas tree – We procrastinated this year on this one, but I think we’ll probably get her tree this week. This was something I did when I was little. My parents always got me a small tree of my own to keep in my room and every year I would collect a new ornament for it. My ornaments were always ballet ones, so I’m not sure if we’ll have a theme or not for Mia.
- Christmas Parade – The parade we took Mia to this year happens every year on the first Friday of December. Cijay and his family would always go every year when they were younger, so this year the whole family got together, brought some food and made a night of it. I can’t wait to do this every year with Mia.
- Beach Fire – We already love making fires at night on the beach and just relaxing, so we want to make it a tradition to go the week of Christmas and make a fire on the beach at night while listening to Christmas music, making s’mores, and drinking hot chocolate!
- Giving back – We want Mia to understand Christmas isn’t just about receiving presents, but it’s also about giving back to others, especially those that are less fortunate than us. The week of Christmas we want to make it a tradition of taking Mia around to help those in need during the Holiday season and hopefully get her in to the habit of it so she will continue to enjoy helping others all year long!
I hope everyone has a wonderful Holiday with your family and loved ones!
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