Momma Chelle's Musings: Happy Holidays and (my) family traditions

Many families have holiday traditions and me and my crew have a few of our own. One is that I am adamant about having a live tree and not anything artificial. I also have a preference for the, what I call, "fluffy" pine trees. There's something about the fresh smell of pine (that doesn't come from a bottle of pine sol or a can of air freshener) and seeing it all decorated with purchased and homemade ornaments. A few of the recent ornaments are also courtesy of a Lowe's Build and Grow Kids Workshop. And for the past few years, I have allowed Davon to be in charge of both picking out our Christmas tree and the decorating of it. He enlisted his younger brothers to help him with the decorating this year and below is the finished product with Davon doing his best Vanna White impression.

how do you like it?

Another one of our holiday traditions is leaving out cookies for Santa. This year I actually went through the extra trouble of rolling out sugar cookies and decorating them, instead of just doing the break and bake kind. Dylan was dying to help me and he and Davon decorated a batch. Carlos even wanted to get in on the action and orchestrate one of the designs.

Nic doing a cookie taste test

Another one of my holiday must-haves (or actually must-dos) is a drive through a local park for its annual Festival of Lights. I have been taking Davon through the light display for many years. I remember when the drive through the display was free; they just requested that you donate canned goods or other nonperishable items. In recent years, they've charged $5 to drive through during the festival, except on Christmas day when there is no charge. So you know how I roll with FREE and so that's the day that we try to go view the lights. Actually it's not because the $5 is such a steep price; it's more out of principle because I had been going for so many years free of charge. I just can't reconcile paying for something I used to get for free.

sign at the entrance

You also know that I am a major supporter of our local park and planning commission and its various offerings. This annual festival of lights at Watkins Park is a nice tradition that many families in our area participate in as is usually evidenced by the cars lined up to drive through the light display. Even with this year's rain, it still took a good amount of time to go through the display with the crowd. There are many still lights as well as some animated displays and many shout outs to the wonderful state of Maryland, including the MD state flag, the PG County flag, and a blue crab.

Because of the rain I didn't get a lot of good pictures because I didn't want to put the camera out of the window but I did get a few good ones. We had to wake up Dylan (as usual) to enjoy and Nic didn't seem all that interested (probably because he was sleepy too) but I still plan on keeping this trip through the park as a part of our annual holiday festivities.