We have continued a Beckstead tradition in celebrating Dutch Christmas and put out wooden shoes out on December 5th.
Another family tradition is to decorate the Christmas tree the Monday before Sinterklaas comes. Since the 5th was a Monday, we decorated our tree last Sunday.
The kids couldn't wait to get the decorations out. I usually put up and fluff out the tree while the kids were in school, but being a Sunday, they all helped so we could get to decorating more quickly.
Natalie helped spread out all the decorations to be hung on the tree and placed around the house. 
The kids are old enough now that the ornaments get pretty evenly spaces around the tree. We did have to rearrange a pretty big clumping of candy canes - although they don't stay on the tree very long.
Another family tradition is to decorate the Christmas tree the Monday before Sinterklaas comes. Since the 5th was a Monday, we decorated our tree last Sunday.
The kids couldn't wait to get the decorations out. I usually put up and fluff out the tree while the kids were in school, but being a Sunday, they all helped so we could get to decorating more quickly.
Natalie helped spread out all the decorations to be hung on the tree and placed around the house. 
The kids are old enough now that the ornaments get pretty evenly spaces around the tree. We did have to rearrange a pretty big clumping of candy canes - although they don't stay on the tree very long.
The tree was decorated in no time. 
Robert had a meeting and told us to start without him - we had to slow down a bit to not have it all done before he got home. 
We love all our mismatch ornaments.
I love the s'more ornaments I found one year, when we lived in Utah, and look for them whenever I'm in stores with Christmas decorations. I guess they were big for a while and now are harder to find. Or maybe they are just harder to find in Georgia.
The kids laid out their wooden shoes Monday night for Sinterklaas.
Carrots and water for Sinterklaas' horse and Dutch spice cake and oliebollen (which we had for dinner that night) for Sinterklaas.
While excited children slept their shoes were filled.
The kids couldn't wait to see what Sinterklaas left them. The chocolate letter for their name, games, movies, hot chocolate, earrings for the girls, some much needed pants for Jake, and snow gloves for everyone (Sinterklaas is always a bit practical and knows it's hard to find anything but knit gloves where we live).
Advent calendars and Dutch Christmas on the 5th always get us even more excited for Christmas.Alyssa is in an a'cappella group at school and went caroling to a retirement community.
The people loved hearing the kids sing and smiled, clapped, and sang right on along with them.Afterward, many of the residents came up to thank the singers. One lady thanked them for starting off their Christmas season. She said the tree was up and the place decorated, but it was never really Christmas until they have carolers.
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