Bonner Kids-

Our family of five has moved around quite a bit over the last 10 years. My husband served 9 years in the military, which took us to places such as Alaska, California, Georgia and a few other states in between. Because of this, it meant being away from family during the Holidays. Instilling Holiday traditions within our family became very important in order to make sure we all stayed connected with family, even if we couldn’t physically be together.

My kids are now 14, 12 and 7 and we recently moved back to my hometown. This is our first Christmas with my parents since my first two were toddlers. To say we are excited about this Christmas would be an understatement! We have all kinds of fun things planned to do, some of which we did when I was little. I can’t wait to share those experiences with my kids, husband, parents, brother and sister-in-law.

I also met my birth mom about 5 years ago and now have even more family to celebrate with. They live only about 45 minutes away and we’ll be spending Christmas Eve with them. It’s going to be fun to experience their Holiday traditions for the first time.

When the kids were younger, we tried to incorporate family Holiday traditions from both mine and my husband’s family. Here are a few of those traditions the kids still ask for every year.

Orange Smoothie and Coffee Cake on Christmas Morning

This is a combined Holiday tradition. My husband’s family has always had coffee cake for breakfast on Christmas morning and my family always whips up some Orange smoothies in the blender. The two together are heavenly and it’s fun and important to sit down together for breakfast after the craziness of opening the gifts.

Loading up in the Car for Christmas Lights

This is always an adventure and was definitely a little tricky when the kids were younger. It seemed that after about 5 houses, they were done for the night. Now that they’re older, we’ll usually be gone driving around for hours. The last few years we have mapped out our route to find the best, craziest and brightest houses in town.

Talking to Family on Christmas Morning

Since we were usually away from family on Christmas, we would spend quite a bit of time on the phone talking to siblings, aunts, uncles and grandparents. We thank them for the gifts, catch up on any family news, tell some funny Christmas morning stories and just enjoy chatting for a while.

One amazing thing about living in different parts of the country has been meeting new people and spending time getting to experience their Holiday traditions. I’m always looking forward to inviting new and old traditions into our Holidays that our kids will pass down to their own families one day.

Guest blogger Julie is a mother of 3 children. She loves sharing the latest and greatest new toys around. You can learn more about her at her blog, ToyXplosion.