Traditions

I am a sucker for traditions. I don't know why, but I love the comforting familiarity of traditions. Now that Steve and I have been married for 7 1/2 years and have celebrated 8 holidays together, we have collected a good handful of our own traditions.

One of the traditions that we originally developed out of necessity is the way we celebrate Thanksgiving, I wrote a blog post about our Thanksgiving Day last year. It developed because one of the first years Steve and I were married I had to work the day before and the day after Thanksgiving. Instead of driving 4+ hours on Thanksgiving Day we decided to stay home. That year we cooked ham because we were scared of making turkey and we went ice skating and had a really, really great time. In fact, we had so much fun that we started staying home for Thanksgiving every year. Most of these Thanksgivings we have spent just as our little family. However, the past few years it has developed into a slightly larger gathering with lots of friends celebrating with us. Since two other significant holidays, Christmas and Easter, Steve spends lots of extra hours at work, including working every Easter Sunday and Christmas Eve, Thanksgiving has become "our" holiday. We don't have to work extra hours, we don't have to be anywhere, we don't have any obligations...so we stay home, cook a huge meal (for just us or for friends too), and then we go shopping and get a Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. It's my favorite holiday.

Besides the other countless traditions like making certain Christmas cookies, celebrating St. Nick's Day, listening to certain Christmas music, watching Christmas specials on TV, going to a Christmas Eve service, etc., one of my other most favorite traditions is Christmas morning brunch. Since Steve always has to work all day on Christmas Eve, usually until midnight or later, we are always still at home on Christmas Day morning. And since we have lots of good friends who are musicians who also work all day on Christmas Eve, or friends who just have to work on Christmas Eve, or friends who are just around, we started having friends over for breakfast on Christmas morning. It's so fun.





We also are usually rushing around trying to make sure we have everything to bring up to my mom and dad's. Tryn gathered all her toys and put them in her new backpack and then made a sort of baby sling for her baby Cuddly and stood around like this for about half and hour waiting for me and Steve to get our act together. She's such a great kid.


I love The Holidays.