Christmas Tradtions (On the Warren Side)

By the power of youtube, a damp microfiber cloth, and compressed air, my space key has been fixed. And I don't mind telling you that I feel pretty accomplished now. I could totally work in the apple store, fixing space keys.

The family at Longwood Gardens

One of the beautiful things about folks getting married is that it combines 2 people with different family traditions, and together you get to pick and choose your favorites, and even start some new ones. Andy and I already have adopted a bunch of traditions in the 5 years that we have been married, some old, some new. Initially I was going to just combine them all in one post, but each family just has its own flavor, and I thought deserved their own posts.

From Andy's side of the family, the biggest traditions mostly come before the day itself. The highlights are picking the tree, going to Longwood Gardens to see the Christmas lights, and decorating the house.

When it comes to trees, there are 2 tree picking methods, the new and the old. The new method is the one currently in use by Andy's family. His parents have an exceedingly high ceiling in their living room, you see, and they always take advantage of its height by getting the biggest flipping tree they can possibly find. These trees have been given up by the tree farms as impossible to sell, because no one wants or can fit a 20 ft tree in the living room. They somehow break the laws of physics to get it through the door, and get many ladders to decorate it. One year, they only managed to string lights on the bottom two thirds of the tree. That's all they could reach people. I tried to find a picture to post, but I can't find one for the life of me.
Andy and I, who have normal ceilings in our house, adopted the old Christmas tree tradition in picking out a live tree, with a bulb intact so that it could be planted once Christmas was over. We even added to the tradition in a way. We always pick a white pine now, because they do the best in our soil. The other trees that we picked in previous years are a bit stunted, where they survived at all. So while a white pine may not be the most traditional of Christmas Trees, it has become our go to. We picked out our tree yesterday, a feat made easy by the fact that they only had 3 white pines bulb-d. Amelia wasn't terribly interested in the tree-picking. She liked to play in the mud and to look at the big tree grabber that loaded the tree into the truck that we borrowed from Andy's dad.

Behold, our tree, trussed up and ready to take home.

Longwood Gardens is about an hour and a half away from our house, and every year they decorate the whole park lavishly for Christmas. Lights everywhere. It is tradition for the Warrens to go around Christmas to freeze our little tails off watching the fountain display and admire the outside lights, to walk around to get some hot chocolate, cider or mulled wine and then to walk the conservatory look at the displays in a warmer setting. Longwood Gardens has become one of the favorite things that we do each year... and this year we are planning on doing it twice. 
 Quick (adorable) note: Amelia really loved the musical fountain display in particular. She just so happened to mix up the word "fountain" with "mountain" and was talking about the "fairy mountains" all evening. So cute! Now we went this year when it was relatively warm but it is usually freezing cold out, so bundle up for the outside lights! 

"Look at the pretty flowers!"

As for the decorating with the Warrens, the Christmas decorations aren't anything extravagant. just a few lights and some personalized stockings and all, but the thing is... my family never really decorated for Christmas. One extraordinary year, my mom hung a wreath on the door and put those fake candles in the windows, and this attempt blew our minds. Now, my family does a tree and stockings and always have, but that is IT for decorations. So we went with the Warren tradition of... you know... actually decorating. 

Oh, one other tradition that we adopted from the Warren side is that they got to pick out one small gift from their stockings on Christmas Eve. We all love the little taste before the "big day". 

So that's it for the Warren traditions that we are carrying on. Later, I will have to tell you about the Davidson Family traditions. 

What are some of your favorite holiday traditions?