St Nicholas Day tradition

I don't particularly feel like writing but here I am.  I'm trying to get over this small cold I have and the kids are all very tired and crabby today.  Somebody woke up before 6am this morning to go check their boots because of course, it's St. Nicholas Day!  The kids have been so excited for this day and they couldn't wait to wash their boots the night before.  Any other time it would be easy to get mad at them and order them back to bed but you can't help but let them enjoy it because that's what kids do best - enjoy their little surprises thoroughly.  Every time Kade is excited about something he just can't sleep and is up way early and of course Kason and Anika wake right up too and I could hear their footsteps all around the house while I tried to catch a little more sleep this morning.  I'm glad we do this little tradition and are pretty much the odd ones doing that because nobody does anything here on St. Nicholas.  When I talk to other moms about it they do know of the holiday but it is very foreign to them, as it is to Ehren.  He enjoys the goodies he gets but doesn't really appreciate the holiday and I can understand because that's how I feel about Thanksgiving Thursday sometime.  Anyway, I am so glad our kids love this tradition and what kid wouldn't when they get fun treats.  It is pretty much our stockings day because families here do the same thing with stockings on Christmas day.  That day we don't do anything, but usually go to Ehren's parents house and his mom has stockings for all the grandkids so our kids still get their stockings too.  I am just happy that the stores get all their Christmas candy and goodies so early that I can easily find stocking stuffers by Dec. 5th.  I'm surprised Kade still loves this holiday because he knows none of his friends at school or church do it, but he doesn't care.  He likes to enlighten them into the whole St. Nicholas tradition and how fun it is.  It is just a tiny part of my country and home I brought with me and am determined to keep it in our family no matter what. :)  Since I failed at so many other things like the language, I at least want to carry on the family traditions and hopefully we can keep doing it for many many years to come.

Advent wreath is another thing I love having for our meals during Advent, it just doesn't seem like Christmas without it.  I found this Swedish wreath on Ebay a couple years ago and I love it.  It's simple and I don't have to try to make my own out of ever greens, even though I loved my mom's too.  But sometimes if I simplify things I actually do them versus stressing over all the details and not even finishing them.  Because traditions can be so simple and yet they mean so much to our kids.  They meant a lot to me growing up and now I want to give that to our kids.

I sure hope we have snow for Christmas though because this does not seem right - very cold temperatures but no snow.  It must be our first St. Nicholas Day here in the northern MN when there is no snow on the ground.  Our kids have been wanting to go sledding so bad that they tried sledding down a little patch of ice in our driveway. :)  I would make them a nice frozen slide down our driveway but I don't think Ehren would appreciate that very much, driving our vehicles down the ice.

at Grace and Kevins on Thanksgiving