The Birthday Sleepover

Our oldest son turns 9 tomorrow. In the past we've let them invite one friend for each year of age. Last year he invited 8 friends over. This year, since he's getting bigger, we gave the option of having a sleepover. We mutually decided that two friends was a good start for the first non-family sleepover.

We did it simple and low-key, but I think everyone had fun (except for the friend who was homesick and went home before anyone was asleep, but he knew coming into the party that he would have a hard time staying away from home--and he had fun except for bed-time).

Personally, I think a lot of birthday parties have gotten out of control. It's great to celebrate and have fun, but we're not going to spend a few hundred dollars on a party. And we find that we don't need to in order for the boys to feel celebrated on their birthdays. They mainly want to hang out with friends anyway (okay, maybe open some presents, too).

So we did a grilled supper outside. The birthday "cake" was a frozen fruit bar.

It has become a tradition, I guess, that we make an obstacle course in the yard. Since this one is a summer birthday, we incorporate the swimming pool and water guns. By the end, it's just a water fight with very wet kids.

After drying off, they gave their gifts, played a few games on the Wii together, and then watched the old Disney Swiss Family Robinson movie while munching on popcorn.

They were pretty tired after that, so the got a fair amount of sleep. We told them the rule of the house was not to wake anyone else up--if you're the first one up and don't want to try and get back to sleep, you're welcome to go downstairs and have a bite to eat (fruit and cereal was on the table) and play. Once everyone was up, we did the real breakfast.

It also turned out that it was the Kid's Workshop day at Home Depot, so we headed there and did their building project.

Simple. Fun. Enjoyable. And the 9-year old had a good time.

The Holidays

Our intention during Advent and Christmas is to focus on why our family marks these celebrations. We try not to fill our days with hectic busyness, hours at the malls or making out lengthy lists of things we want, but be intentional about what we do and how we do it. We try to create space for hope, peace, joy and love. As well as family, fun and generosity.

To read about some of our holiday family traditions, go to these links:

Shoeboxes

St. Nicholas Day

Putting up our Tree on Santa Lucia Day

I share our traditions not to say our way is right or pass judgment on anyone who celebrates differently, but to encourage you to make the holidays about what you desire them to be--not about what consumerism and commercialism try to make them. May this season be meaningful for your family--not something you dread.

St. Nicholas Day

Yesterday was St. Nicholas Day. We have chosen to honor that day for gift giving over Christmas Day which we want to keep more focused on the birth of Jesus. St. Nicholas was known for his generous charity to others, so we follow suit by packing a shoe box filled with toys, crayons, toothbrushes and other items for children overseas who wouldn't receive gifts otherwise. Nils and I were able to deliver our boxes yesterday to the Operation Christmas Child dropsite in the Twin Cities. The boys also receive a present in honor of St. Nicholas, but we try to keep the main focus on giving rather than receiving.

Merry Christmas!

May the gift of God's love be the greatest gift you receive, knowing He loves you as a perfect Heavenly Father (and covers up all the mistakes we make as earthly parents).

I hope you're able to develop wonderful Christmas traditions with your family as well. We're still working on them, but our morning consisted of eating Swedish pancakes, singing Christmas carols, reading the Christmas story and opening presents (yes, in that order--the kids were wonderful about waiting patiently).

Traditions

We put our Christmas tree up tonight. I think this is one of the earliest times we've done it before (we tend to put it up later and keep it up through at least the "twelve days of Christmas"). We're still developing those holiday traditions as our children are getting older. Everybody gets at least one Christmas ornament each year, so we each have a box with our own things to hang on the tree. I noticed tonight that our tree has become more about what the kids want to hang on it than anything else (back in the years before kids we'd occasionally do themes with the ornaments).

Another tradition we started tonight as well was doing Advent devotions together each night. We're using Jesse Tree family devotions again this year (some years we've had books with stickers to put on a scene each night; the Jesse Tree has an picture to print out and color and hang up as a mobile to go with each night's devotion).

We also finished getting all the gifts we needed to fill our shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child today. We started doing this last year so the boys could see that it's more important to give to those who have nothing than to fill up their toy bins with more toys. We hope to be able to add some service projects to our Christmas routine at some point.

We try to build traditions that focus on the season--why we, as a family, celebrate Advent and Christmas. We do "fun" stuff, too--taking pajama rides to look at Christmas lights is a favorite, and making cookies for our neighbors--but through them all we try and remind the kids of what why we do all this. We try not to celebrate mindlessly, but to have some intent in all we do.

So what are some of your family's traditions?