We love Christmas at 1225 K Drive. We love decorating (although we’ve toned it down because we don’t like taking it all down 😂). Some of our favorite traditions include:

Festivities with friends – we have had Christmas gatherings including dirty Santa gifts and belly laughs with the Yayas and families for years.

Christmas pajamas – we open our pajamas on Christmas Eve. At first we got the girls pajamas then eventually we started getting ourselves pajamas as well. Shopping for pajamas is one of my favorite things.

Stockings – Betty needlepointed the girls stockings so these are priceless to us. We all add goodies to the stockings throughout December. It’s so much fun to find perfect gifts for each other.

Christmas lights – after dinner on Christmas Eve, we go to the fairgrounds, Chad’s Christmas village, and ride around to look at the lights. As you can see by some of the pictures, in years past, we loved bringing our fur girls along too.

Christmas Eve Service – we love going to the midnight service at Lebanon FUMC. It’s always a challenge to stay awake but we’ll worth it.

Gifts – we definitely went overboard with gifts over the years. A few years ago, we all decided that we would give four gifts (this doesn’t count stocking stuffers): something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read. We have really enjoyed gift giving more since we started this tradition.

Christmas breakfast – when Layla was little, Betty and Felix liked to come see what Santa brought her. We would throw together coffee and treats. After a few years, we began cooking a wonderful Christmas breakfast. Richard would build a fire. The Smallwoods loved this tradition of seeing what gifts the girls received and enjoying a leisurely breakfast. We were so thrilled to have them over.

Last year was our first Christmas after Richard’s death. Of course it was hard. We didn’t decorate much. Christmas Eve service was online due to covid. But we still spent Christmas Eve together. We wore our Christmas pajamas and followed many traditions. We made pizzas. We laughed and cried. We made sure Richard was included. While it was different, we still found reasons to be joyful.

I plan to enjoy many of our same traditions this year while creating new traditions this Christmas. I’m thankful for past Christmas memories and look forward to creating new ones.