Episode 07 - Birthdays & Holidays
Birthdays are some of our fondest and favorite childhood memories, but they don’t have to be stressful! Here are some simple things you can do to make the most of our times of celebration.
Christmas
For most of us, Christmas is an incredibly busy season. Most of our kids serve for our Christmas Eve services (which start, sometimes, weeks before Christmas), which we LOVE! Of course, the most important thing to remember in the Christmas season is that we are celebrating the birth of Jesus. But that means that many traditions look a little different for us. Here are a few things we do to make Christmas special in the midst of busyness:
Christmas Eve doesn’t have to be on Christmas Eve. We pick a day earlier in the month to do our Christmas Eve traditions, so that on Christmas Eve we can focus on serving and telling other people about Jesus.
Find the traditions that work for your family and then be consistent. You can do something like Build-a-Bear (that even our teenagers still enjoy), make a special meal, make Christmas cookies, watch a favorite Christmas classic, or put on pajamas and drive around looking at Christmas lights. Whatever it is for your family, just make time to do it each year. Your children will remember it and probably carry on some of those traditions with their own children.
Make Christmas morning special without the pressure. The days leading up to Christmas are filled with hustle and bustle, so waking up before the sun to open presents may not sound like your ideal Christmas morning. We fill stockings with fun little toys and candy, and then we put them at the foot of our bed. It slows down our morning just a little bit while not squashing the Christmas morning excitement for the kids.
We also don’t mark our kids’ names on the presents (because otherwise they figure them out!). So we code them with gift tags, and someone will be the trees, another will be the ornaments, someone else is the candy canes, etc. They don’t know which one they are until Christmas morning, which makes the morning a little more fun. We’ve created some free printable gift tags that you can use below!
Easter
We’ve never made a HUGE deal out of Easter. We spend Easter (and often the several days before) at church serving, so on Easter morning we aren’t at home anyway. Of course, we’ve always done some simple Easter baskets, but we’ve never done egg hunts (but if your family likes it, go for it!).
One thing we’ve done since our kids were little are the Resurrection Eggs. You can find them here. It’s a fun little activity that helps point kids to what Easter is all about…Jesus!
Birthdays
We don’t often throw big birthday parties, but we want to make the kids feel loved. So here are a few things we do to make birthdays fun and special:
Let the birthday child pick dinner. Every kid is different; and some might choose to go out, some might want to order in, and others may want a home-cooked meal.
Make the most of dinner time! At birthday dinners, we always go around the table and say something we love about the birthday child. It always ends in laughs and often tears. It really is our favorite part.
Let the birthday child pick the cake. Some of my kids want ice cream cake (Baskin Robbins is the best…don’t try to argue with me on that), and others want my “famous” chocolate cake. I’ll tell you a little secret: it’s not really that special. I buy a box cake mix and add a little extra oil and some chocolate chips to the mix. Whatever your child likes, you don’t have to be the “Cake Boss” to make a fun and memorable cake.