Family Traditions
Baking cookies has a special place in our house. Actually, when my husband and daughter join forces to make their chocolate chip cookies, they are the best in our house. They don't bake together very often, but I refuse to use their recipe, so when they want those ones, they have to do it. Do you notice the sly "Get hubby to spend quality time with his daughter" technique here?
I bake chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, oatmeal cookies, sometimes I vary the tradition with shoofly pie, pumkin roll, or cake. Every Christmas, the kids and I make Cream Wafers. I love to let the kids help me bake. My oldest son learned to count when he was two by baking cookies. As we placed the cookies on the tray, we'd count, "1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5."
Other traditions in our family are: a yearly trip to Anchorage to shop, family nights, church attendance, the big Christmas Eve party, and don't even get me started on Christmas Day - now my favorite day of the year. We always make a big deal of birthdays - birthday kid chooses the dinner menu and the cake, sometimes we have friends over.
Traditions are what memories are made of. In my parents' family, most of our memories come from summers spent in the hay fields, and VBS, a long-standing tradition since my mother has been the director for 27 years.
What traditions do you remember from your childhood? What traditions are you establishing in your family?
I bake chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, oatmeal cookies, sometimes I vary the tradition with shoofly pie, pumkin roll, or cake. Every Christmas, the kids and I make Cream Wafers. I love to let the kids help me bake. My oldest son learned to count when he was two by baking cookies. As we placed the cookies on the tray, we'd count, "1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5."
Other traditions in our family are: a yearly trip to Anchorage to shop, family nights, church attendance, the big Christmas Eve party, and don't even get me started on Christmas Day - now my favorite day of the year. We always make a big deal of birthdays - birthday kid chooses the dinner menu and the cake, sometimes we have friends over.
Traditions are what memories are made of. In my parents' family, most of our memories come from summers spent in the hay fields, and VBS, a long-standing tradition since my mother has been the director for 27 years.
What traditions do you remember from your childhood? What traditions are you establishing in your family?
posted by Harleys @ 2:51 PM
8 Comments:
At 4:17 PM,
Rabbity-Sniff said…
I think with an ADD husband, it's just not possible to remember to do anything on a consistent basis whether it be daily, monthly, yearly, etc. But I'm the mom and I guess I can make us have the traditions I want us to have. Right now I can't think of any traditions my family has. We're only three years old so maybe that's not enough time for traditions to be set? Maybe year four will make all the difference in the world.
At 12:39 AM,
Katrina said…
Growing up, we had a lot of traditions involving holidays--like decorating cookies instead of coloring eggs, Mom and Dad hiding our Easter baskets and making us hunt for them (found mine in the dryer one year!), going around the table and sharing our blessings on Thanksgiving, having two Christmases, one for each side of the family (my side lives in Georgia, his in Idaho--makes joint celebrations impossible!) etc. etc.
I think one of my favorite traditions was with my dad. He and I would go to the movies together on Sunday afternoons. It was fun to have dad time all to myself, and we always had good talks.
I'd like to make dates with our kids one of our traditions, too.
At 7:06 AM,
Jennifer said…
Well, I'm sure we have some traditions because there are just some things that a family must do on a consistent basis to keep everyone happy. Going to church on Sunday is a big one - now that we've found a new church. When the power goes out, we play UNO. Easter egg decorating is a big deal around here too. Christmas Eve with hubby's family at their house, Cmas morning here at home to see what 'Santa' brought, then Cmas day with my family. Most of these things are special occassions, but I'm sure we have some regular day-to-day or week-to-week traditions that just aren't popping into my sleep-deprived brain right now! I'll have to pay more attention over the next few days to see if there's anything worth mentioning :)
At 9:44 AM,
Jennifer said…
Hey Debbie! I can't get to Bearsie's blog - any idea what's going on? She didn't get rid of it or something, did she?
At 11:15 AM,
Harleys said…
I just logged on, Jennifer, and couldn't get to Bearsie's blog either. Dunno what's going on.
At 2:51 PM,
Rabbity-Sniff said…
I'm gone for a little while. I gotta regroup. I'm still reading and commenting though. I'll let you all know when/if I return.
At 4:44 PM,
Harleys said…
Glad we'll still see you around, Bear. Thanks for the tip on word verification. I wondered how everyone got that. It's a little annoying, but after seeing what was posted on my comments, I'm glad to have it.
At 8:36 PM,
Rabbity-Sniff said…
A tradition we had in my family when I was growing up was the celebration of Christmas Eve at my Grandparents' house. My family and my uncle's family would have dinner at Grandpa and Grandma's on Christmas Eve. It was always scrumptious - and there were always Santa Clauses (cookies that were Santa faces). Then, our grandparents had stockings for each of us. They were taken from the mantle on the fireplace by a selected member of the family dressed as Santa and handed out to everyone usually with much laughter and jokes about only getting a lump of coal. My two favorite Santa's of all time were my brother and my Grandpa. We don't do this anymore because we've all moved away from each other and have started our own families. I've made a feeble attempt or two at keeping the tradition going but it just isn't the same without the grandparents.
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