Christmas blog #1

I have a friend that has done blog challenges where you blog every day for a month, and another one was for Christmas. I am terrible at committing to blog every day, but I did try to do the Christmas one. Instead of posting it daily, I started writing them in a word doc and I was planning on posting them later. I was able to work on a few at a time, but still didn't follow through. The next few blogs will be topics from the 12 days of Christmas blog challenge. I don't think I will post all of them, but here are a couple!


Day 1: Christmas/Holiday traditions
My traditions have changed a little bit the past couple of years since I have moved to New York. A recent tradition that Kelsey and I started last year was to watch Elf on the roof of my building. Last year we came up with the idea. We decided that we would take my queen size air mattress up with blankets, layers of clothing, hot apple cider, and my computer to watch the movie. Just to be clear, there aren’t normal stairs to get up to the roof. It is basically a fire escape ladder that is straight up and down. We carefully pass things up and pack a backpack to get everything up there without killing ourselves or falling off. Last year it was very cold and windy. By the end of the movie we were asking ourselves why we thought it was a good idea. It was a fun little experience and something that not many people can say they have done!

This year we decided to continue that tradition. We invited our friend Danielle to watch with us. We thought we were going to get fancy, so we decided to go to Graffiti 2 and get a computer from there that has louder speakers and a couple of other things. We thought about making a fort out of some folding chairs and blankets. We ended up getting some barrel clips from G2 while we were there and the camera to document the occasion. We get back to my apartment and layer up and pack our things. We start passing it all up the ladder to the roof and get set up. We worked on the fort for a little bit, but the clips we had weren’t quite big enough. We decided to just add that blanket to us and forget the fort. Fail #1. Then we go to plug the computer in and realize that it is a 3 prong plug and the extension cord I had was 2 prong. Fail #2. I go downstairs to try and find another solution and end up getting my computer instead. We bought a hot pot with cider in it and were planning on heating it up while we were up there if it got cold. Hot pot cord is also 3 prong. Fail #3. We brought the camera up also to take pictures, but Danielle had her camera with her, so we just used that one. So everything we made a special trip for was not used. We should have just stuck with what we knew.

We drank the semi-warm cider quickly as we started the movie. It didn’t take long for the cold to catch up to us and we were once again asking why we thought it was a good idea. Again, good memories make it all worth it.

Hopefully this will be a holiday tradition I can keep even though Kelsey is leaving me. I hope to have new friends by next Thanksgiving to share this with!

Another recent one I started myself was getting a real tree. I get smaller ones that I put on my end table, but I love having a real one. It smells great!

Some other longer standing traditions I have are the following:
-Christmas Eve service and then Christmas with my dad’s side of the family, including white elephant gifts.
-Waking up early (no matter how old we get) and looking through our stockings while waiting for parents to get up so we can open the rest of the gifts
-Christmas with the Rushing family, including a very special white elephant game that involved my poor cat
-Peppermint hot chocolate/mochas