christmas kick off party

Last year I heard about a family who let their kids sleep under the Christmas tree the night they put it up. I thought it sounded like such a fun tradition so this year I decided to start our family's annual Christmas Kick-Off Party. My hope was to create an event just for our little family that

- gave us time to be together before the start of such a busy season with friends and extended family

- let us talk about our plans for the season and how we wanted to make it special for ourselves and others

- gave us a chance to learn and remember the real reason we celebrate Christmas

Overall, I loved how the party turned out and can't wait to continue the tradition. (i only took video of the party so don't have many pictures - these are just images saved from the video file.)

This year for the party:

- Elle and I made invitations for everyone in our family, and she passed them out to everyone at Family Home Evening a week before the party.

- We planned the party for the day after Thanksgiving so we'd have the day to put up Christmas decorations. We spent that Friday putting up and decorating our tree and setting out other basic Christmas decorations.

- For food, we ate appetizers: sourdough and pumpernickel bread with hot artichoke dip, veggies and dip, sparkling cider and cranberry juice

- During the party, we ate, planned, read the story of Jesus' birth from the scriptures, and opened up one present (pajamas - traditionally my family always opens pajamas on Christmas Eve, but I wanted to use pajamas as part of our kick-off. For Christmas Eve, the girls got to open a book which we read before bed.)

- After the girls put their pajamas on, we all watched a Christmas movie together. This year it was old Christmas cartoon classics.

Other things I envision for party but didn't incorporate this year:

- Sleeping out under the tree

- Hot chocolate/popcorn during the movie

- Talking about memories/looking atphotos from past Christmases

- Writing letters to Santa

Here's a few pics of our Christmas decor - thanks again to my sis-in-law Julie.