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Monday, December 17, 2012

Making the Most of your Holidays with Family and Friends

As some of you may or may not know, I’m heading east for the holidays! I grew up in the eastern part of Canada, went to school in the States, married an American and now live in Oregon — over 2000 miles from home.

Yes, that is my life in one sentence.

We always try to get back to visit my family every other Christmas which seems fair, but really it’s not a whole lot of time compared to all the months I’m NOT there. So, whenever I do get around to visiting home, I try to do everything I can to savor the moments to last me two years of being away.

Here’s what I do to make the most of the time I have with my family:

1. Pause and Reflect — Whenever my {abnormally large} family gets together, there is rarely a quiet moment. 10 adults plus one million children under the age of 9 makes for one crazy house. But in the quieter moments of the day, I always try to burn memories into my mind and feelings into my heart. One of these memories from 2010 includes staying up late on Christmas Eve once all the babes were asleep, telling stories and laughing hysterically with my siblings and parents. I don’t remember what we were talking about but I know we all had a wonderful time.

2. Capture Moments To Have Tangible Memories — I never used to be obnoxious with my camera, but I’ve turned into quite the paparazzi. Recently I invested in a video camera so I can record the fun things we do on this visit home for Christmas. Whenever I pull my camera out, I get groans. But then come mid January, everyone comes knocking on my door to get a copy of all the pictures I took.

When you think you don’t need your camera, bring it along! The last Christmas we spent at my parents’, my daughter was 2 months away from her second birthday and LOVED playing with her cousin who is a few months younger. Well, luckily I had my camera out one afternoon when these two decided to sit in the fridge. The other chairs were too big for their little bodies, so they loved having a little ledge to sit on that was just their size. Whenever the fridge popped open, these two little girls came running!

3. Create Rituals — I decided to pick ‘rituals’ as my third tip because it’s something that can help make something memorable. If it’s out of the ordinary, odds are you’re going to remember it better!

Back in September, once my Mom knew all her kids and grandkids were going to be coming for Christmas, she started asking us for ideas on what to do together. Things came up like going skating, baking cookies and bowling.

I asked my daughter what she wanted to do in Canada and all she could come up with was “throw snowballs at Grandpa Ernhofer”. So, we’re planning on doing that too.These rituals can be big or small. As long as you’re together making memories, it doesn’t matter what they are!

So, those are the things I’m going to do this year to make the most of the Holidays with my Family.

BlogHer wants you to make the most of your holidays and give one of you lucky readers a $50 Starbucks gift card. Here’s how you can enter: To be entered for a chance to win, answer the following question in the comments below: “What is your most favorite holiday tradition?”

Rules:

No duplicate comments.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post

b) Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: “”#SweepstakesEntry”"; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post

c) Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post

d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.

This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.

The Official Rules are available here.

This sweepstakes runs from 12/17/12-12/28/12.

Visit the Starbucks brand page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ posts and find more chances to win!

Good luck and Happy Holidays!

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