The last few years we’ve created a new holiday tradition by visiting the historic town of Cedarburg, Wisconsin south of us about 1.5 hours. We adore this tradition for many reasons but our two most loved reasons are visiting Santa in his workshop and selecting a few new handmade ornaments from Germany for our tree at home. This has become a special weekend for us every December.

Did you hear that my dream is to one day own a tree farm? Going to the tree farm every year is easily our favorite family activity of the year. I was talking to a cousin last week and we both agreed the experience we had as children playing in the frozen creek, riding the hayride out to the fields, playing hide n’ seek between trees around the property (the secret to winning is building a team and having walkie talkies guys), excited to come across Grandma who had a bag full of fresh baked cookies (peanut butter with a hershey’s chocolate in the center or buckeye’s are my favorite, just in case you’re in the baking mood, wink) and gold fish crackers in individual bags for all 18 grandkids.

Starting at the beginning of the year as a family we started watching the whole Harry Potter series and collecting or in my case re-collecting the books. As a thirteen year old girl when “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” was released I remember it was the first time I became excited to read since having my parents read to me as a small child.