Christmas traditions are starting to change a bit now that we are living on the boat. We used to decorate a tree in our yard in Nederland and one in the house. These past two years we have been wrapping our mast with a garland. It actually looks surprisingly like a tree right in the middle of our boat, and we have even found cute battery operated lights to string through it. Also, instead of my gigantic box of collected keepsake ornaments (now either donated or wrapped in our keepsake box in my dad’s basement) we have been making our own ornaments. This is a tremendous hit with the girls. Audrey really enjoys following fancy directions for 3D paper balls or flowers. Lorelei is a little more make-shift. She colored a mermaid and cut it out and strung it up, and she even stuck a pipe cleaner through her kazoo and put that on the “tree”.

We have also altered the way we buy presents. In the past we had a large budget that we always went over. Now we have a very small budget that we still occasionally blow out. Thankfully when we go over it isn’t too crazy. Last year I bought too much for the girls and when we were looking at it wrapped on the table in the salon, we realized we wouldn’t have anywhere to store it. We stuck half of the stuff back in the settee back storage, and this year I’m pulling it out again.

We have still found time for some traditions that originated in our land based life, like making gingerbread houses, going to see some version of the Nutcracker, reading The Night Before Christmas, and lots and lots of Christmas music!