Ready, Set, Done!

We don’t. Travel for Christmas. When my husband and I were married we literally lived across the country from both sets of parents. I decided that I wanted Christmas to be a joyous celebration within our own home. I wanted to have our own Christmas tree and open presents in our apartment on Christmas morning. This had less to do with avoiding the hassle of traveling at Christmas and more to do with establishing our own family with our own traditions. Now that we have four children, I’m glad we established Christmas as a celebration in our own home with our own family. Partially because transporting Christmas presents for the entire family to and from a location where driving for a trip of short duration is out of the question, is out of the question. And I’m not sure how you could even make that happen with air travel. As a family, we like to travel as lightly as possible. Sometimes I feel a little bad for depriving the grandparents of the joy of seeing their small grandchildren light up with joy and excitement on Christmas morning, bare little feet running down the hall to see what Santa has brought. They could come to us, but we are the only ones living in this area of the country. Every single one of my brothers and sisters (there are 5 of us) live within a 2 hour travel time of my parents. My husbands family is not as geographically condensed, but still a lot closer than we are. So, it doesn’t make sense to ask them to travel during such a hectic travel season, leaving behind the majority of their family. Of course it is much warmer here, so that could be an added incentive for making the trip. Which means, it is much colder there. That is a definite deterrent. So for now, we will maintain our tradition of enjoying Christmas morning with just our own beautiful little children. I’m not going to feel too bad for the grandparents, at least for this year. At the end of January, we’ll be meeting them all in Disneyworld.