a new tradition

I am a sucker for holiday traditions. To me they are the best part about celebrating the holidays. Every year we get together with my family for our traditional Christmas breakfast. I look forward to that meal evey year, maybe even more actually than exchanging presents. My husband and I have tried to come up with some tradtions for our own little family. We have experimented with an advent calendar for a Christmas or two and this year we decided to use it as a things to do calendar. Each day we go to our calendar and along with a treat we find something (hopefully) fun to do that day. We have watched Christmas movies, made treats, gone shopping, and we have started the tradition (a tradtion within a tradition, if you will) of preparing for Sinterklaas

This friendly fellow is Sinterklaas. I looked up some holiday traditions from countries of my family's heritage and found one I liked. We found ideas on this website. Sinterklaas is from the Netherlands and I remember doing this with my shoes when I was little and I loved it. So on the night of December 5 we set three pairs of shoes out by the door, and wouldn't you know it, the next morning there were little goodies left for us! Hiccup is too little to realize what was going on, but I'm sure he'll love the organic peaches Sinterklaas left for him. I think this will be something fun for our family to do for many years to come. Now I've just got to get my hands on some awesome wooden clogs!