Growing up as a child, my family had a lot of traditions. Holidays were always spent together, family dinners, Euchre nights, camping trips, you name it. Birthdays are always a really big deal with my family. As a kid, we would always get to go out to dinner to a restaurant of our choosing, had a ton of presents, birthday party with our friends from school, the whole deal. As an adult, we do the same thing, doing a big meal as a family and having a little party, usually with some kid theme picked out by one of my nieces and nephews. Two years ago, it was "Hannah Montana" for my birthday. (Roo hit this phase where, for some reason, she swore up and down that "Nainy loves Hanna-tana" I got Hannah Montana gifts for everything.) It's fun, and it's always a great time for us to get together.
Now that T and I are forming our own family, we are starting to establish our own special traditions to carry on. One of these is we both take off St. Patrick's Day every year. No work, no computers, nothing. We sleep in, get up and get breakfast out and head downtown to see the St. Patrick's Day parade in Indy. We then head out to a fun bar in downtown, the Rathskeller, and hang out outside in the biergarten all day. It's relaxing, it's fun, and it's a day that we spend just the two of us. And it's one we hope to keep up.
T and I both make a big deal out of holidays - the house is always decorated to the nines for Christmas and Easter, and we always celebrate birthdays with a big bang (check out last weekend's posts if you don't believe me...)
Right now, every 18th of the month before we get married, as we count down to the big day, we make a special meal, just the two of us, and it's always the same. T's honey chicken stir fry. (I can post the recipe if you guys want because it is GOOD!) We'll be doing the same thing this Sunday as we hit the "2 month till I do" mark. I'm definitely looking forward to a good meal that night!
We have silly traditions, too. For instance, every Sunday, we have a standing date of watching TLC's Hoarding: Buried Alive. It started when I just found it on TV out of boredom one night, and it's quickly turned into a big thing, usually with me squealing with pure delight "Oooh! Hoarding is on tonight!" (I think I thrive off of watching other people's misery...I don't know...) It's silly, but it's something we do together, and I love it.
Of course, most of our traditions involve just T and myself, but as we grow as a family, I can't wait to start fun little traditions for our kids. What kinds of traditions do you all have?
I think that is awesome. So many times we get busy with life and forget to slow down and have "us" time. And YES! Please post the honey chicken stir fry recipe. That sounds delicious.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE traditions! We always did big birthday bashes when I was a kid, too - my mom made a Huge Deal out of our birthdays. That was hard to give up once I grew up and moved away. :-(
ReplyDeleteMy husband and I are working on our own traditions... But I think it will be a few years before our schedules are normal enough to have anything set in stone.
I love family traditions. All of ours include the kids these days. It's fun to continue traditions from the family you grew up with, modify some of them and to make completely new ones!
ReplyDeleteHere are a few that I can think of off the top of my head.
Each Christmas Eve the girls get a new pair of pajamas and a new ornament for the tree.
On Christmas Morning, we take turns opening gifts. We start with the youngest and move up to the oldest. Each person opens a gift and it moves to the next person. It takes hours to open gifts and it's so much fun. You never miss what people open and the kids get a chance to open packages and explore what they got before just tossing it aside before ripping into the next gift.
For St Patty's Day a leprechaun sneaks into the house while the kids are still sleeping and turns the milk green.
This past year we started making Easter Story Cookies. http://mymagicmom.com/easter-story-cookies/
I love these wonderful ideas! One year before we were married, my love and I made a bunch of finger food and ate it standing up in the kitchen while sharing a bottle of beer. He often talks about making that a tradition. You've inspired me to surprise him with a repeat of that night. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteTraditions are a awesome way to come together as a family. We also decorate to the nines at our house.
ReplyDeleteOne of our traditions is Nov. 1st take down Halloween and we put up one of our trees. We don't decorate till Nov. 8th (I have no idea why we picked that date). They we go nuts and put up the rest of the decor.
Another one is Family game night on the 23rd of December. We live so close to family that we don't get alot of family alone time so we take that night to just eat dinner and play games. No extended family is welcome just the 5 of us. The boys love it!
Great blog post, follower and BFF
Peaceful wishes,
Melissa
http://thecutestchaos.blogspot.com/
Hubby and I have our traditions too, the biggest being "family day". We also have certain TV shows we love watching together, like Wipe-Out. That show makes us laugh SO hard. It's like watching a train wreck only with people. We are so sick! If you've never watched it and need a good laugh check it out on Tuesday nights.
ReplyDeleteAw - traditions are awesome! My family didn't really have many traditions growing up, so I'm dedicated to making sure I have a ton with my kids.
ReplyDeleteAnd I love yours - you two just get more adorable all the time!
thanks for visiting my blog. i love your post about traditions. so important. as you saw, my most recent post is about my family tradition of "sunday dinner".
ReplyDeleteWhat awesome traditions. I love that you two do dinner every month before the "I do." It was cracking me up that Hoarders is one of your traditions. That's awesome!
ReplyDeleteThat's so great that you've started traditions of your own. Try hard to keep them once you have kids. Now that we have kids we are trying to establish some new ones with them.
ReplyDeleteGAAH I wrote a whole long response and the internet ATE IT!
ReplyDeleteOkay, anyways :hehe: ... your post has totally made me realize what little things that my husband and I do are actually traditions. We LOVE watching "Mad Men" (Jon Hamm is hot) together and it's our guilty little pleasure. We also like watching "Hoarders", but that's only because we make fun of my parents' "hoarder" potential!
Great blog! If it matters any, I'm "vertically challenged", too!
I'ts adorable that you do this together. Have fun creating your own traditions. I love the background of your blog... so pretty. I found you thru the BF community follow friday. It is so much fun. I am having a "tag along tuesday" game in my community every tuesday. I hope you will join.
ReplyDeleteWe love Sunday nights in our house. We microwave some popcorn and sit 5 in a row snuggled under a cozy blanket and watch Dr Who. The kids scream and hide their eyes and then peep up for more.
ReplyDeleteTraditions don't have to be elaborate they just need to be something that your family enjoys doing!
Sorry, that previous comment was supposed to be from me, Gina. My husband must have been logged on to check his emails on my laptop. Not that he would disagree on my comment but he's just not a bloggy leave-a-comment-and-feel-the-love kind of person. Thought I better claim it as my own!
ReplyDeleteI LOVE traditions, holidays and birthdays too! Those are big deals in my house as well! My birthday is next month and I can't wait!
ReplyDeleteHappy Friday!
OK, I kind of love that St. Patricks day is the big holiday for you! Seriously love it!! You two are too cute!
ReplyDeleteEverything in this post is awesome, Alaina! I especially love that your family has kid-themed birthdays. That just sounds so fun!
ReplyDeleteMy family sucks when it comes to tradition. But when I was pregnant, Henry and I had a picnic in a cemetery on Christmas. It started because my family wasn't talking to me and we had nothing to do on Xmas. It was kind of like, "I'll show them! I'm still going to have Xmas!" type of thing. Anyway, it was kind of cool, because cemeteries are my zen places, I'm there at least 4x a week, so even after I had the baby, we kept the tradition up. So now Chooch gets his cemetery photo every Xmas and it's become normal to us, but weird to everyone else.
I guess that is kind of weird, now that I'm typing it out...