Tradition!

Traditions tie us to our family, our roots, our community. We need them because they help us know who we are and how we relate to the world around us. I’ve been thinking about the traditions we have in our family lately. We have a lot. I love that we each brought some from our childhood that we are now making part of our kids’ childhood and that we have some that we’ve made up all on our own either purposefully or on accident. I thought today I’d just list some of our traditions. It won’t be a comprehensive list because I’m sure I’ll remember several more after pushing publish. But it should be fun to see what events we celebrate, little and small. So, here we go.

New Years Eve

• Steak BBQ
• Walk/jog at midnight to start the new year off on the “right” foot/a running start.

Easter

• Watching the sun rise.
• Roast lamb for dinner.
• Reading the Easter story at dinner.

Thanksgiving

• Hand-print turkeys on our Thanksgiving table runner.
• Grandma Giles frozen salad
• Homemade cranberry sauce (for both the turkey and the cheesecake)
• Cheesecake

Christmas

• Decorate the tree with homemade ornaments and thrown (not strung) popcorn.
• Decorations go up the day after Thanksgiving and stay up through January 6th.
• Going to Target on Christmas Eve and splitting up for 30 minutes to go buy stocking stuffers for each other (we’ll be modifying this one slightly this year because of the kids, probably doing it earlier in the month).
• Can of soda in the stocking.
• Caldo verde soup for dinner on Christmas Eve.
• Bacon BBQ cracker dip for general munching on Christmas Eve.
• A new music box on Christmas Eve.
• Watching midnight mass at the Vatican.
• We leave pistachios and jerky out for Santa.
• Roast for Christmas dinner.
• Wrapped wind-up toys and Christmas crackers (the pull kind, not the eat kind) at each plate for Christmas dinner.

Hamburger BBQ Holidays

• Memorial Day
• Independence Day
• Labor Day
• Thanksgiving Eve (because the weather is nice enough here that we can do it but it isn’t where our families live)

Family Home Evening

• Walk around the neighborhood
• Sugar cookies (Iddo’s preferred treat. We make them every Monday afternoon.)

Other Dates

• Groundhogs (hot dogs) in a blanket for Groundhog Day dinner and watch the movie “Groundhog Day”
• Calzones and jalapeño poppers for the Super Bowl.
• Pi(e) Party for Pi Day (March 14th)
• Little Caesar’s Pizza for the Ides of March (March 15th), because Caesar was killed on that day.
• Roast dinner on the Summer Solstice (that’s the day Brett proposed to me and he made a roast for us for dinner that night) and a drive up to the spot where he proposed.
• Attend the temple for my birthday.
• Attend the temple for our anniversary.
• Take a photo of the two of us on the 14th of every month (we were married on the 14th of the month).
• Take a photo of each child on the anniversary of their transfer holding the previous year’s photo.

Other Events

• Krispy Kreme after going to the temple.
• Waving and blowing kisses when one of us leaves home.
• Saying goodnight to each other in English and Portuguese.
• Dad saying goodnight to the kids in Hebrew, me saying goodnight to the kids in Portuguese.
• Waffles for lunch on Sunday. Alphabet soup for Sunday dinner. Popcorn and apple juice for snack before bed on Sunday.
• Taco Monday