Nov. 30, 2010
Current Giveaway: Our next giveaway will be announced soon! CONGRATS to Wendy E. for winning our Rockin’ Rob gift pack
If you need a holiday gift for a little one in your life, you won’t want to miss this chance to win our new prize pack! Our friend Rockin Rob is sponsoring this giveaway. Win a prize pack worth over $60.
- The Newly Released Interactive Kids CD “The Rockin Rob Show”
- 1 Rockin Rob T-Shirt for Mom
- 1 Rockin’ Rob T-Shirt for Toddler (choice of pink or blue)
- a Toddler Tambourine
- an Egg Shaker
(Find Rockin Rob on Facebook too)
Here is how to enter:
1. If you are not already a Gail’s Scoop subscriber sign up.
2. Leave a comment below

telling us about a favorite holiday tradition.
3. One winner will be selected at random on 12/6 . GOOD LUCK!
Past Giveaways:
11/21 One reader won a Friday Night Family 4 pack to the Coterie Theater
11/5 One contestant won a luxury night for two at the Hilton President Hotel in the Kansas City P&L.
10/21 One reader won a prize pack (2 Jim Cosgrove CD’s and shirt, $25 restaurant gift certificate, and photo shoot by Capture KC Sports)
10/5 Two lucky readers each won a pair of tickets to the Haute Market Shopping Party
10/3 One lucky reader won a $50 gift card to Kokopelli Mexican Cantina
9/16-9/26 20 readers won a $25 Parents Night Out from Monkey Bizness
9/7-9/12 12 readers won a $80 KC Royals / KC Corn Maze gift pack
8/31 One reader won a family four pack of tickets to the Kansas City Irish Fest from the KC Pumpkin Patch
8/27 Three readers won family four packs of tickets to a T-Bones baseball game
8/23 Three readers and 2 Facebook fans won a green home cleaning gift pack
8/5 One reader won 20 hours of free babysitting and 2 more readers won free membership at Ella’s Silver Spoon Sitters
7/26 Two lucky readers each won a pair of tickets to Science City
7/19 One reader won a Dan Saleaumua and Neil Smith football camp. Care of Smoov Performance.
7/8-7/20 15 readers each won an $80 KC Royals / KC Corn Maze gift pack
6/28-6/30 four tickets to the Haute Market Shopping Party #20 at the Ritz Charles
6/6 Facebook friend won a great book “The Cheap Diva’s Guide to Frugal and Fabulous Living” by Stephanie Ann
5/24-5/25 Facebook friends won four tickets to 2010 Jiggle Jam at Crown Center
5/20 Five Facebook friends each won a ticket to Just For Her Expo
5/10 Facebook friend won “The Cheap Diva’s Guide to Frugal and Fabulous Living” by Stephanie Ann
4/29-5/31 Refer your friends and win great prizes
4/22-4/29 Win $50 gift card to Home Depot
4/15-4/21Five readers each won a memberships to Ella’s Silver Spoon Sitters
4/8-4/14 Two readers each won four tickets to the Just For Her Expo at the Overland Park Convention Center
















We have several traditions, but the one that the kids like the most (and so do I for other reasons) is We let the kids stay up late and then we bake a cake, sing happy birthday to JESUS at midnight(because he is the reason for the season). Then we leave out a slice of cake and milk for Santa. The kids like to stay up late and then we get to sleep in in the morning because they are tired.
We make a cake too! last year was the first year but we will be making HIM a cake every year and all thru the season reminding our kids why we have CHRISTMAS and I will stick with my 1 big and a few small gifts and a stocking no matter how much my budget is because the meaning is more than gifts …
Our favorite holiday tradition is that we open one present on Christmas eve before bed and sing holiday songs.
We have several holiday traditions in our house, every year the kids get to buy a gift for the other sibling no more than ten dollars. On Christmas eve they get to open the gift that they bought for each other and open their Christmas pjs. They wear their new (I wash them before wrapping them) pj’s to bed. We leave cookies and a carrot for Santa and the raindeer. Since we don’t have a fireplace we leave a special key out on the front door. Then Christmas morning we wait for everyone to get up and we take turns opening the gifts. Everyones stocking is not marked as to who is whos, so every year they get a ornament with their name and the year and that gets placed with their stockings. Also, we always put the tree up on thanksgiving.
We always open one present on Christmas Eve night. We leave a carrot for Rudolph and cookies for Santa that we have made the day before. Then we wake up in our christmas pajamas to Santa’s gift and stocking surprises. Then later we go ahead and open the gifts from one another.
In our family, we always open one thing on Christmas Eve. We love looking at all the lights, especially residential lights since we often find something unusual or especially pretty. It will be my daughter’s only third Christmas so we’re still making new traditions.
We have tons of traditions and I love that my kids always talk about our holiday traditions all year long. Our newest tradition is going out for Chinese food for Christmas Day dinner like in the movie “Christmas Story”. It started because it’s usually just the 5 of us for Christmas dinner and we had snacked so much during the day that we weren’t very hungry for the special meal I was going to cook. My husband jokingly said, “Let’s go out for Chinese.” We had a great time and the place was packed! The kids think this is the best tradition we’ve ever started.
The first thing we do is clear the house of all the under used clothing and toys and give them to a needy family to make room for the new. My oldest daughter and I make a TON of Christmas cookies to give to the family, we have such a great time, we usually laugh so haard we cry and flour and icing cover the kitchen, rare oppurtunity with a teenager!! Our extended family just started instead of doing presents every year we go to Ameristar to eat, no one has to cook or clean, worry about what to get people we just enjoy the conversation and company and it is a very nice treat with crab legs, prime rib, etc, etc!!!
When I was small my dad always celebrated St. Nicholas on Dec 6th, by us putting our shoes outside our door and we would receive candy, small toys and money in them. When he passed away when I was thirteen I never forgot about this holiday. So when I met my husband he had two small children 7 and 11 and they books I read said to start a new holiday tradition with your blended family. I know have a 3 year old and a 20 and 23 year old step children. The older kids are now reminding my 3 year to put his shoe out on the 5th for the candy, money, and small toys. Hopefully this is a tradition that all my children will pass on to their children.
History of St Nicholas
Nicholas, Saint, patron of children and sailors, of Greece, Sicily, and Russia, and of many other places and persons. Little is known of him, but he is traditionally identified as a 4th-century bishop of Myra in Asia Minor. His relics were stolen from Myra in the Middle Ages and taken to Bari, Italy. St. Nicholas is the subject of many legends. He is credited with restoring to life three boys who had been chopped up and pickled in salt by a butcher. Another famous story concerns his giving three bags of gold to the daughters of a poor man and thus saving them from lives of prostitution. Later tradition transformed the bags into three gold balls, which became the symbol of pawnbrokers. In the Netherlands and elsewhere St. Nicholas’s feast (Dec. 6) is a children’s holiday, appropriate for gifts. The English in colonial New York adopted from the Dutch the now unrecognizable saint, calling him Santa Claus (a contraction of the Dutch Sint Nikolaas). They moved his feast day to the English gift holiday, Christmas. The career and qualities attributed to Santa Claus are all recently acquired.
Our holiday tradition is to go to Christmas Eve service and then drive around to look at all the different holiday lights in the area. When we get home, we have a variety of homeade Christmas cookies. Then the kids get to open one present on Christmas Eve, which is always Christmas pjs to wear that night.
Our holiday tradition was started by my grandmother when my mom was a child. Each Christmas Eve we bake homemade sugar cookies using the same cookie cutters that my mom used 50 years ago. I am so happy to share this tradition with my 3 year old. It helps my mom remember the good time with her mom who passed many years ago.
CONGRATS to Wendy E. for winning our Rockin’ Rob giveaway! Thank you to everyone for entering!
Our favorite holiday tradition is getting up and opening up gifts at home then driving to Grandma and Grandpa’s house and playing with the cousins for the rest of the day!!
Our favorite holiday tradition is having all our family and some friends over for Christmas eve dinner and to exchange the childrens gifts and then the adults do the White Elephant gift exchange. Then the next morning we get up very early with our son and let him open all his presents from us and from santa to him! Its the calm before the storm of the day and its just us 3…our family
We are working on starting some new traditions with our little boys, 2 months, and 2 years. Anyone have any good recommendations?
This will be my son’s first Christmas so we are just beginning the Christmas traditions. My husband and I decided that we would make it a family tradition to go to the Mayor’s Christmas Tree Lighting at Crown Center to kick off the holiday season. We had a great time doing that and we look forward to starting other traditions throughout the years.
We bake tons and tons of cookies (over 25 different kinds) them pass them out to our neighbors, family, and friends the week of Christmas. Then of course on Christmas Eve we sprinkle Magic Reindeer food in our back yard for the reindeer to enjoy and leave Santa fresh baked cookies and milk on his special Santa plate by our tree!
We don’t have any traditions yet. We just had our first son and hope to start some new traditions this year!
We don’t necessarily have any specific traditions, but we always make it to both sides of the family and then try to make our way to see the grandparents on either side. We do try to find a time in which we can drive around various parts of the Johnson County area and look at the festive lights!
Going to Crown Center, eating at the crayola cafe while live christmas music plays in the patio, and viewing the xmas tree from our table!
Our newest(started last year)and favorite tradition is the Elf on the Shelf. Each morning the children love to find where the elf has perched for the day after flying to the North Pole each night. The kids also plead their case regarding any misbehaviour with the elf about why he should still report that they were nice that day. I’m not sure who is having more fun with it, us or the kids!
We keep a basket of pieces of hay next to a little manger. As the month of December passes when you see someone do something nice you put a piece of hay into the manger. On Christmas morning we put the baby Jesus on the pieces of kindness hay in the manger and thank God for all the kind things people have done for us this month.
We always put our tree up on Thanksgiving and talk about the ornaments that we put on the tree. Most of the ornaments are ones that our son made or my grandmother made. Then as the days pass our son changes the way the tree looks by changing where the ornaments hang! Then on Christmas Eve we let our son open one present and watch a christmas movie. Then on Christmas morning we open up presents with family, and my mom makes homemade donuts….then the kids in the family play with their new toys..
My favorite tradition is one I remember as my favorite tradition as a kid so I made sure I passed it on to my kids! I fill their stockings and then hide them around the house. As the kids wake up they are allowed to go find their stockings and open them. This “holds them off” till everyone is up and ready to open presents! It also makes the stockings more special and fun!
getting my kids involved in packing boxes for operation christmas child and new pjs for the whole family on Christmas eve
Its a traditions for my husband and I….letting the children think that their stockings are all Santa has left, then watching their faces when they see under the tree.
My husband and I always make hot cocoa and drive to different neighborhoods to see the lights. Now that we have our son, we can’t wait to take him to see all the lights and to start new traditions with him!