Family traditions

Today was a day of great tradition and *ahem* reverence in my family. Because although I am beginning on the road to becoming Jewish, my family is Catholic, and all that that implies. Therefore, being the first weekend of December, it was time to Christmas the place up. This means dragging the ancient artificial tree out of the basement along with the four or five crates of decorations my mother has accumulated over the years, and have the kids decorate the tree. For the last several years, it's been my kids' responsibility (with my brother's supervision and assistance) to decorate the tree. Before that, it was me and my brother, with my dad supervising. All my mom does is carefully remove each ornament from its box and hand it off to whoever's putting it on the tree.

This year, my nephew is finally old enough to start helping out (he's 2 and a half), so the process takes a bit longer. But it's a lot more fun :) He had a blast! At one point, he just touched one of my mom's glass teardrop ornaments and it shattered in his hands, and there was a bit of a panic to get all the glass pieces off him before he could get hurt, but other than that, it was pretty awesome.

I managed to get an awesome picture of all four kids together (new baby included), but I seem to have misplaced my camera's transfer cord, so I'll have to post it later. *grumble* There was a lot of playing and laughing and fun today, and it's nice that we can still do this together. Over dinner, we were discussing the whole conversion thing, and my  mom asked if I would need to be baptised again... I just kind of blinked a few times and looked at her... "Mom, Jews don't do that..." Then my son asked if I would need to be circumcised. I just about choked on that one :D

I took a walk when we got home, even though it was quite foggy and still raining (yay, Ikea umbrella!). I feel as though I've had a full and satisfying weekend, and now I'm ready to end it and go to bed. I promise to share pics as soon as I can get the camera to cough them up!