Your Family Traditions

[amydawnsmommy]

What are your family traditions?

We have a few but I'd like to add some new ones.

[maya44]

Hmmm, good question:

Family Meals where we do the "Three Things that Happened to me today and guess which one I am making up". That's fun!

Half-Birthdays: You get half a cake (the bakery near us sells 1/2 cakes) and cute little presents and your favorites for dinner.


Doughnuts are ONLY eaten on vacation


Toothmantha; Our tooth fairy. She brings presents, writes notes in a glittery silver maker and leaves fairy dust (shimmery body powder) sprinkled on your pillow


Presents in your underwear drawer: When I was little I used to think how cool it would be to one day just open up my underwear drawer (the first thing I did every morning) and find a present. Now 3 or 4 times a year my dd's open up their undewear drawer and find a present.


Spa-baths (used on very cold days or when dd's aren't feeling great) Hot bath, Lots of yummy smelling bubbles (Philosophy bubble baths), Lots of candles (on the vanity...not the bathtub) and your favorite "trashy" magazine for younger dd's that's Archie, for older one it's Teen People or Cosmo Girl!


Day after Thanksgiving Give Away. We go through all our toys/books etc... and clear out old toys and books. Take them to the local charitable institutions the next week


Hot Chocolate (mom's special recipe) after you are out in the snow (Mom's recipe involves melting together Hershies kisses and Semi-Sweet Chocolate chips and just a touch of milk). It's sinful!

[amydawnsmommy]

Half-Birthdays sound soooooo great!!!

And the surprise of getting presents in your underwear drawer sounds like so much FUN!!!

You rock!!!!

[A&A]

We go out to breakfast on Christmas Eve morning.

[incorrigible]

.

[amydawnsmommy]

Originally Posted by A&A

We go out to breakfast on Christmas Eve morning.

What a lovely family tradition!

[catnip]

We make tamales with dd's half-sisters and thier mom right before Halloween, and we build an altar with mementos of our ancestors and cook their favorite foods in the week before Halloween.

We get up and go outside to watch the sun rise on the winter solstice. We make handmade gifts, and try to have all the materials purchased before Thanksgiving. (Usually we do buy a few photo prints after that date)

Not really a family tradition, more a couple thing, but on his birthday, our anniversary and Valentine's day, DH gets to pick out what I wear, and vice versa.

We have a pinata and an egg hunt for the spring equinox, using plastic eggs filled with stickers, slips of paper with affirmations, and little trinkets rescued from thrift stores (also DH's birthday).

We have zucchini pancakes the first day we harvest the first zucchini from our garden.

[limabean]

We go to Yosmite every year as a family vacation, and we call it "Mysemite" because my family has gone there every year for at least 6 generations, from my mom's great-grandmother all the way to my son. When we get there, the first thing we do after unpacking is walk to Happy Isles, get an orange juice bar, and watch the rapids flow under the bridge -- you can't skip the orange juice bar or it's not a real trip to Yosemite. We also put strings of colored lights all around our cabin while we're there -- I have a separate set (of the summery-looking type, not Christmas lights) packed in my camping stuff just for the occasion, which my hubby thinks is weird, but ... it's tradition! Oh, and we pack nice tablecloths and little potted plants for the picnic table. We really settle in and make ourselves at home.

All the cousins get together to decorate gingerbread houses a few weeks before Christmas. My grandma (and now my mom, now that my Grandma has passed) bakes the gingerbread houses and puts them together beforehand, then puts each one on a cardboard cake round, puts out a ton of royal icing and candies, and lets the kids go for it. The houses get more elaborate each year, and we even make little yards on the cake rounds.

Birthday presents are wrapped and placed on the dining table a couple of days before the party to add to the anticipation and make the house look festive.

[AngelBee]

Such sweet ideas! :

[punchy]

Thank you for all the suggestions, I'm all about starting unique family traditions. The only thing we've done so far (dd's 2.5), is let her stay up for Hockey Night in Canada every Saturday during hockey season. She doesn't watch TV other than this and is definately more interested in the popcorn and the ice cream than the game, but it's lovely to watch her expression when she finds out it's Saturday.

And a quick question on the subject: I'd love to hear more winter solstice ideas. In our city there's a parade celebrating the winter solstice with homemade lanterns, stiltwalkers in elaborate costumes, drum circles...what else could we do quietly as a family? tia

[jillibug]

We do Sunday evening bike rides through the park.

Friday evening in the winter we camp in front of the fireplace and watch a movie.

At Christmas we do shopping for The Giving Tree at church then have lunch at her a place of her choosing

This year we started an new. The first day of summer break we went to the zoo. DD says we need to do this every year.

[Rhiannon Feimorgan]

We live in a rural area and so it's fairly easy for us to go out and cut a wild tree. (ours is a Yule tree but the same could apply for a Christmas tree)

We pack a lunch and make a day of it. Eat a picnic in the snow with hot chocolate and make snowmen. We leave gifts of apple, nuts and seeds for the forest animals to thank them for the tree. When we are finished with the tree, we remove all the decorations, hooks ect and bring it back to the forest where we got it. We leave gifts for the animals again and leave the tree to decompose back into the soil like it would have if it fell naturally.

This is something my parents did when I was a kid.

Another thing my parents did that I have yet to do with my kids but i want to start is-when the first snow apeared on the tops of the mountins behind our house, we would drive up the forest service road to as far past the snow line as we could make it safely. We would play in the snow for a while and than make some big snowman sized snowballs and put them into the back of the truck. My dad would drive the truck down the mountin and my mom and us kids would follow on the taboggin until the snow ran out. Then we would all go home and build a snowman in the middle of our still green lawn next to my moms flowers. Then we would laugh at the looks on the faces of people driving by.

We've been living in the flat lands since my kids were old enough to enjoy this but we've moved back to the mountins now so I want to introduce this this year.

[KermitMissesJim]

Our new one is our grape song and dance. I told my kids I love the way a cold, fresh grape explodes in your mouth when you bite on it and we made up this little hip-popping dance and wordless song to go with it (since our mouths are full of grape).

It's very silly, I know, but it makes us happy.

[amydawnsmommy]

Originally Posted by KermitMissesJim

Our new one is our grape song and dance. I told my kids I love the way a cold, fresh grape explodes in your mouth when you bite on it and we made up this little hip-popping dance and wordless song to go with it (since our mouths are full of grape).

It's very silly, I know, but it makes us happy.

The silly things you make up with your kids are the best things!

[amydawnsmommy]

Our Family Traditions

going to the Canada Day fireworks and sometimes celebrations every year, it's our anniversary too

giving Christmas presents to little girls who are the same age that Amy Dawn would be now in her memory

having a really nice breakfast (waffles, sausages, oranges, toast and a nice juice) on Christmas morning before opening presents

visiting Amy Dawn's memorial in the Tranquility Garden

we usually send balloons to Amy Dawn in Heaven, get a birthday cake and pictures of Hope on Amy Dawn's birthday

[bunnybartlett]

we started a summer solstice

tradition this year by making a pizza box solar oven and cooking lunch with the sun in honor of its power.We also made a sun type craft.We hope to do this every year and i figure as the kids get older the ovens will get better and better!!

[waiting4it2snow]

What a wonderful thread idea!

I realized as I read this that I really don't have any rituals with my family and I myself was raised without any. That is something I would really like to change.

I also did a search on Amazon and found The Book of New Family Traditions. Definitely going on my wishlist,

These ideas here are so lovely, thank you to all who have shared.

[ErinBird]

My family is fairly new- DH and I have been living together for under 2 years and DD is only 10mo, so I'm struggling to establish traditions for us.

Friday is pizza night.
half birthdays are fun, though we're all March/September birthdays so it just lumps all celebrations in two months
PJs for Christmas Eve

[Ellien C]

We've had an Easter beer hunt since we were first married.

DD and I take a bath together every Sunday night (or Monday if it's a holiday). She goes to day care and it's our last goodbye for the weekend. She 4.5 and I used to think I couldn't wait until she was old enough to bathe alone, but now we really enjoy the time together. We are totally focussed on each other.

I really love the underwear drawer present idea. I pick things up for DD occasionally, but I've been at a loss for a fun way to give them to her. I like the idea of wrapping them and slipping them in the drawer.

[A&A]

Originally Posted by jillibug

We do Sunday evening bike rides through the park.

This reminds me.........Sunday mornings (when the weather is good) we take a bike ride to buy the newspaper.

We also have an Easter egg hunt in our pasture every year (for Easter, of course!)

And we always go to a nearby park to watch fireworks on the 4th of July (not original, but just thought I'd mention it because it's our tradition.)