Traditions...Old & New

Three of my favorite Christmas traditions began sort of by accident...

Shortly after we were married, Eli’s sister Naomi needed surgery, so her four kids came to stay with us for about five or six weeks during the summer. We were having so much fun with them that I suggested to my sister-in-law Toni that my niece Guinevere (who was 9 at the time) come and spend part of her summer break with us too. Toni thought 5 kids might be too much for a newlywed couple living in a two bedroom condo to handle & suggested maybe Guinevere come visit during her Christmas break…so began the tradition of my "California" nieces & nephews coming up to Utah at Christmastime when they were nine years old. It was tradition that I think we all looked forward to birthdays for, however it ended as soon as there were no more nine year olds.

Guinevere & Mickey at a Escamilla family Christmas party.

Guinevere's mini snowman...there wasn't much snow

As a Christmas present in 1991 my mother gave Eli & I a beautiful glass ornament shaped like a heart. The outer edge of the ornament is framed with poinsettias with two love birds perched at the bottom of the heart and the center has Our First Christmas Together 1991 embossed with gold lettering. The beautifully delicate ornament looked a little out of place on our tree among the brightly painted Santa Clauses, toy soldiers, stars and other little wooden ornaments we had bought to decorate the tree, but we placed it prominently at the front.

Our first Christmas tree...you can't really see the ornament

On Thanksgiving Day 1992, we moved into our first house & the next day promptly began decorating for Christmas. We had so much fun shopping for the perfect tree…looking back at pictures now, it looks more like Charlie Brown’s famous Christmas tree. Shortly after we decorated the tree a Christmas card from my mother arrived. Inside the card was another ornament. This one is also in the shape of a heart, but it is gold & has a house intricately cut out of the center. Around the edges it reads, First Christmas in a New House ~ 1992…so began another new tradition. The next Christmas was Connor’s first one, so we found an ornament of Santa at a baby’s cradle & every year since we find an ornament that represents something that happened with our family during the year. Some of my favorites are Santa riding a whale in his swimsuit from 1999 when we spent Christmas in California, Santa at a desk on the phone with a ton of paperwork from the year we started Print Media Consultants, a fire truck from the year we had a fire in our house & a beautiful bell that looks like a quilt from the year my mother passed away. I like the bell because it reminds me of a saying my mom had embroidered & framed, “Families are like quilts: pieced together and stitched with love.”

Our very own Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

Christmas 1993 was spent in California with my family. We stayed with in Oceanside with Suzy, Brent & the boys and had a very enjoyable stay, but Christmas morning we felt a little bit like we were invading on their Christmas. After that we decided to go to San Diego for Thanksgiving & stay home for Christmas. So the next year, on Christmas Eve as we were wrapping gifts for Connor and putting them under the tree another tradition emerged. One of the gifts was a really cool train/car track set that was called Flip Track. The train tracks were on one side of the track pieces & the road for the cars was on the opposite side. It had these awesome mountains with tunnels that the tracks could go through, along with a filling station, airport & a dock. Not only did it have trains and cars, but there was an airplane and boat also. It was just too much for Eli to resist…instead of wrapping it he ended up setting it up. We decided to leave it set up by tree, so we could see Connors excitement upon seeing it. Every year since then, Santa has always left an unwrapped gift out for each of the boys. It was kind of a nice tradition when they got a little older…they would go out & find the unwrapped gift to play with and let us sleep in a bit.

This year we stumbled across two new traditions… Eli has wanted to deep-fry our turkey for I don’t know how long and even bought the fryer about six years ago, but for one reason or another it hasn’t been used. This year we planned ahead enough to figure out how much oil was needed & purchased it. Christmas morning I was a little nervous as he started setting things up…especially after I saw an Allstate commercial quoting facts about how many homes get burned down each year from people trying to deep-fry their turkeys. OH MY! The turkey was SO good! It was the moistest turkey I have ever had…this is definitely a new tradition!

The second new tradition came about when Connor was visiting his girlfriend Alyssa & they decided to make homemade eggnog. I guess they messed up following the recipe & it didn’t taste so good. Needless to say, when he got home Connor wanted to go buy the ingredients to try again. Now I am not a big fan of eggnog, but he had whipped it so well that it was nice and airy instead of thick & heavy. It turned out REALLY tasty! Another new tradition to look forward to next year!