Do you have favorite traditions you do with your kids during the holiday season? While this time of year is already super busy, there are a few things I try to make time to slow down and make happen any way. Where I did No Spend November last month, this month I’m making a list of December bucket list items to do with my family. I’ll give the list below, and later in the month I’ll check in and talk a little about the things we did together.

This is really the first year that we’re really encouraging our 4 year old to help with decorating. As a smaller toddler, my decorating took place during his naptime, but now he’s able to be more careful and seems to take joy in helping us decorate. Most of our ornaments are sentimental for one reason or another, but none are expensive. Any too sentimental for the risk of breaking get handled by Mom and Dad and careful placement near the top, while we encourage our boy to go ham with the rest.

Of course, with a little one who is gaining stronger opinions every day, we had to make a Christmas wishlist. In year’s past, I’ve tried to compile a list for him, but this year I saw opportunity when the Amazon catalog came and I jumped on it. Initially, my 4 year old wanted every item on EVERY page. While I knew this was a teachable moment, I was baffled at first. Finally it dawned on me that together I could show him how to narrow down his “wants”. So first, he circled about 90% of the book. Then, I prompted him to look through the book and we would dog-ear pages where he saw something that caught his eye. Well, this resulted in every other page being dog-eared. Next, we sat down again and I tore out those dog-eared pages and told him he had to narrow those 28 items down to 10. Together, we sat down, clipped the items out and glued them to cardstock paper to compile his revised list. A bonus here is that with the attention span of a 4 year old, one task ended up being segmented into smaller tasks so we were able to connect together not just once but multiple times over the course of this one task.

Last year, we started a fun tradition of making ornaments sort of by accident, but I’m so glad we did. With Little Sis on the way, I ordered wood slices from Amazon to Mod Podge our pregnancy announcement to and give as gifts. The pack was quite large, so I let my little guy and his friends color some of the remaining wood slices. This year, I knew I wanted to do something that I could incorporate both kiddos, so I found this precious recipe from Pinterest. Best yet, I thought I could use any leftover dough to let my 4 year old play with the dough. That was a HARD pass for him. He declared it yucky and wanted absolutely NOTHING to do with it after making a hand print in the dough. But we got it done and they turned out precious!

Another favorite holiday tradition I’m growing fond of is building Gingerbread Houses. I think I’m so in love with this one because I never did it growing up. Doing them can be a splurge as I paid $10 for ours which feels borderline like highway robbery, but nonetheless similar to our list making, it also provided more than one opportunity to sit down and work together on something. My son found this as an opportunity to send himself into a near sugar coma… believe me. Fights were had, a nap was taken and more nutritious food options were offered as the day went on.

One thing I cannot make it through the holiday season without doing is taking time to take a family photo and sending Christmas cards. Growing up, pictures were everything in my family. So it’s no surprise I’m as passionate over them as I am.

Baking cookies is another thing I feel like is super common during the holidays. In years past, I’ve always bought the dough, but I think this year I might try to find a great recipe and bake them from scratch and use this as an opportunity to get my little guy in the kitchen with me and not jjust slap dough on a cookie sheet and reap the rewards.

One area that can generate extra expense if you’re not careful is local lights and events. We love driving around to look at lights each year, and traditionally since having kids we do this on Christmas Eve. But in addition to dedicating a special night to looking at Christmas lights, I also try my best to scope out the dates and times of local parades, Santa and / or Grinch meet and greets, and train rides. The deal breaker for me on these fun events is whether or not they’re free. I try to work in any free things I can, and then if I’m able to do that I don’t feel as guilty for splurging on the ones that aren’t free.

An easy way to make a Christmas memory with littles is reading a Christmas book or watching a Christmas movie. We typically reserve one night per weekend to do a “movie” night where we let our little guy stay up late, move mattresses into the living room, pop popcorn and stay up watching a movie and sleeping in the living room. Our Christmas books and movies get packed away with the seasonal decor at the end of the season, so pulling these back out feels like something new even though they aren’t. It’s also so fun camping out in the living room by the Christmas tree with the ambiance the lights put off.

And finally, one more Christmas tradition that my family does is opening one gift on Christmas Eve. Spoiler alert – it is ALWAYS pajamas and a new ornament to add to the tree. Shh… don’t tell my toddler. I love doing this, because it allows me to make sure he has crisp, clean jammies to change into before bed to wake up wearing fresh jammies for Christmas morning pictures.

Traditions are such a fun way to add a little magic to the month of December. I refer to many of ours as a Bucket List, because I want to try and make sure that we get in as many of these as we can. While some might argue this “list” logic only adds to the chaos and busyness of the season, I simply feel like it’s ideas to keep in my pocket when things are feeling stale or if I want to make an ordinary day feel special. What are some traditions or bucket list items you and your family do during the holiday season?