Advent Day 4: Enjoy the Journey

Setting up for holidays can be a lot of work. Every time I open up our Christmas boxes and bring them down from the attic, half the lights don't seem to work anymore, and the half that do work are tangled. If I'm not careful, setting up for Christmas can be a major factor in ruining Christmas time for the family.Some of the stress is unavoidable. However, something Lauren and I are trying to do is not just see the set up as something we have to suffer through in order to later enjoy Christmas. We are trying this year to make the process of setting up events in and of themselves.This last week we decided that Friday afternoon we were going to begin decorating our house. So we took our new son to go get a Christmas tree with us.Kyler of course was very impressed by the trees, so after we picked one out, we tied it to the top of the car and headed home. Since Kyler goes to sleep at 7 (yes, it is incredible how much babies sleep), Lauren and I put him down for bed and then we finished the rest of the evening by putting Elf on, getting into our Christmas pajamas, making hot chocolate, and decorating the tree together.By making this an event, the setting up and decorating of our house for Christmas went from being stressful to something we were looking forward to.This year let's try to commit to enjoying the journey. Make a tradition with your family of how you set up your tree, or do the lights outside your house, or make Christmas cards. Don't just rush through the preparations for the holiday. I'm finding its doing things like this with my family that continually stand out and provides important moments for us to connect and grow closer doing things that might otherwise push us apart.