 As far as family traditions between me and my household, I'm gonna really be honest with you guys. Me and my husband have not created any official family Christmas traditions. Hi you guys, my name is Brittany and welcome back to my YouTube channel. You guys, in today's video, I am going to share with you all about my family's Christmas traditions. I'm really excited about this video because this is a part of a huge collaboration hosted by Christy from These Little Sprouts. She has reached out to me and a whole bunch of wonderful and amazing homeschooling mamas just for us to share all of our Christmas traditions and put them in this massive playlist. So I am very excited that Christy reached out to me to be a part of this collaboration. I really love Christy. I love her channel. I just really can relate with her, especially since that our kids are all around the same age ranges. I believe her kids are 10, 5 and 2 and my kids are 10, 3 and 1. So I'm a little bit like a year off with the younger kids but I really feel like through her content and through everything that she shares on her platforms, I really can relate with her and I definitely know she knows the struggles. Especially having like that big age gap between the oldest and the younger kids. So yeah, I'm very excited you guys about today's video and just sharing with you all of my Christmas tradition. So let's go ahead and get right on into this video. So you guys growing up, at least for my childhood Christmas has always been a huge thing. I actually grew up in the church. So just for Christmas, the Christmas season it really always started probably like after Halloween, November was really the true start when it came to Christmas growing up. If I could put the categories for the Christmas traditions that I grew up with they will be in three. It will be home, family and service. So being in the church, I can definitely say that I always was a part of some type of Christmas recital some type of Christmas play. Christmas was huge. I remember just, I just have vivid memories of just always being centered around just family and love. And I really feel like my mom, she did an awesome job really showing us what Christmas and the Christmas season was truly all about. Along with participating like in the church and doing all the different things within side of the church, musicals, recitals my mom always made us do some type of service some type of area where we were given back. I even remember giving back when I was younger where we were a part of so many like toy drives. And as I got older within the church my mom, she really challenged me and my siblings to really start to give back in other ways where we fed the homeless. We went to homeless shelters and we sang to the sick in the hospital and it was so many different areas that my mom really exposed me to in my childhood and it really gave me an appreciation for this season. It really just showed me just all aspects that Christmas is not just about the gifts and the tree and you know, all of the cookies and the bacon and the fun things but it's also about giving to others. It's about service. I really feel like my mom instilled the Christmas tradition showing us that the Christmas season is really a start in a new to the new year. I really feel like she did a good job of displaying those things to me. So within those three categories some things that really sticks out to me as Christmas traditions that I have done with my family growing up was just I think things at the home is what I'm gonna start off with talking about is that we always would open up our stockings on Christmas Eve. I always look forward to open up our stockings, you guys. Inside of our stockings, we really didn't have much in them. It was a lot of gifts from the Dollar Tree, toothbrushes, candy, but it was just so much fun. Just opening up all of those guide gifts especially on Christmas Eve when you see the presents under their Christmas tree. You're so excited to get to them and you just have one more night left and I really love that tradition of opening up our stockings on Christmas Eve. Another tradition that my mom has recently started, I believe she has done this with my daughter for the past like three or four years where it's after Thanksgiving, my mom, she would take my daughter and my niece out to the park and they will pick up pine cones and after they collect all the pine cones my mom will lay them out on the table to dry and the girls they will paint them at glitter and those pine cones will be a part of a lot of Christmas baskets and Christmas gifts that my mom will give out to various places. My mom, she definitely always showed me just how to give during this holiday season and how the little things that we do, sometimes we feel like they don't matter but they do and those little gifts and those little tokens of love and appreciation that we show our neighbor, that we show our co-workers, even though we know we may not receive, those things are definitely appreciated to others. So that is a tradition that my mom actually has done with my grandkids. Another tradition that we have done growing up is that my mom actually taught us how to make homemade ornaments. You guys, one year Christmas was really, really tight for my mom and she actually didn't share this story with me until I was a lot older but Christmas was really tight one season and my mom didn't have enough money to buy us ornaments for our tree that year. So my mom actually found some red fabric at the bottom of her closet and she took cookie cutters to make the templates and that year I actually learned how to sew and we sewed and we stuffed our own ornaments that year. You guys, that Christmas tree I feel like was the prettiest Christmas tree we ever had. Even though for my mom that year she definitely knew that season was really tight. Things was really, really hard that Christmas but that was one of my favorite Christmas growing up and my childhood just sitting at the table making ornaments with my siblings. My mom actually made ornaments with my oldest daughter, Brielle and my niece the other weekend and my daughter was so happy when she came home and it's just so funny how a hard season has turned into a really beautiful tradition for my family. I have not yet made homemade ornaments with my younger daughters just yet. You guys, they are one and three like I said and I definitely know I have time to create these memories and traditions for them but for right now, you guys, it's really survival mode for me when it comes to my younger girls but I'm definitely happy that my mom, she definitely still holds on to these traditions that we have grown up with. Now as far as family traditions between me and my household, I'm gonna really be honest with you guys. Me and my husband have not created any official family Christmas traditions within our household. I feel like we have gathered traditions from my side, from his side and we're just kind of combining them but for ourselves, we haven't really created any. However, this year is gonna change. This year, we're actually gonna do something really, really different. We're going to celebrate Kwanza this year and I'm really excited about it. My husband, he actually did Kwanza one year with his father so I really think that celebrating Kwanza could possibly be our new family tradition. I'm very excited. We actually had to learn a lot about Kwanza and the Kwanza season and even though we may not be able to celebrate all seven days of Kwanza, I really want us to at least strive to do as many days as we possibly can. I really feel like Kwanza would be a great family tradition for us to add on and I'm very excited to see how this is going to play a part in our new family traditions. Other than that, you guys, I really feel like I don't have any just grand family traditions. Again, I really have learned to focus on home, family and service throughout the Christmas season and one thing I definitely will say is as my girls get older, I definitely know a lot of service things they cannot do just yet but as they get older, I'm really excited to show them service, show them how we can give and serve others just locally and I can't wait till they get older so I can start that tradition within my household. So you guys, I know this video was very short and sweet. I don't have anything like big and fancy. We do the regular things, cooking, baking, spending time with family and yeah. So you guys, please don't forget to check out all of the amazing moms and amazing homeschool moms videos where they're gonna be sharing their traditions. It may be bigger, elaborate traditions or it may be small and simple traditions like I celebrate here in my household. So you guys, as always, please don't forget to comment, like and subscribe and I look forward to seeing everybody in my next one. Bye.