Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Leap Day: Developing Family Traditions

Howdy Humble Readers...

Have you had a good Leap Day? 

Things here started out pretty good, but then Ginny's teeth started bugging her and then I managed to ruin our dinner before it even got started (sooo stupid... I was going to make quiche, and I had taken out the pie crust out of the freezer.  I had also taken out a freezer bag of rhubarb in plans of making a rhubarb crumble.  Apparently the rhubarb bag had a hole in it, and as it thawed it leaked all over the pie crust.  And my cell phone.  *sigh*  Thankfully I was able to save my cell phone.  I wasn't so lucky with the pie crust).

Anyway, back to the point of this post... I've been doing a lot of pondering lately about family traditions. 

My family has always been big on traditions.  From what we have for breakfast on Christmas to restaurants we have to visit when my sister and I are in K-town.  And now that we are a family of soon-to-be-four, I'm feeling the urge to develop some traditions of our own.

I'm not saying that my Beloved and I are totally tradition-less.  We watch "A Christmas Story" every year on Christmas Eve, I make appies for Oscar night, and Valentine's day is treated almost as important as our anniversary.  But I want to come up with some fun things that we do as a family...

How will we make birthdays special?

Will we go watch the fireworks on Canada Day?

How will we celebrate days like St. Patrick's Day, the first day of school, or big achievements?

And I was thinking this morning that Leap Day would be a great day for some fun traditions.  It's an extra day.  Maybe it will be a day that we do 'naughty' things, like play hookie from school/work (once every four years can't be too terrible, can it?) and go tobagganing.  Or perhaps it will be a day that we go to the Big City to the North or South, and go to a museum or the science center.  Maybe we'll just go to a movie in the afternoon and eat junk food. 

Not all traditions have to be big.  And they certainly don't have to be perfect.  I just think it's important to celebrate the fact that we are a family.  To make the ordinary special. 

What traditions do you have in your family?  What traditions are you looking forward to sharing with your kids?

5 comments :

  1. We have a lot of quirky little traditions. When we decorate our Christmas tree, there are certain ornaments that each of us always hang...and my oldest always hides a Grinch ornament on our tree. My husband always reads Twas The Night Before Christmas to the boys. We try to always attend the Lessons and Carols service on Christmas Eve.

    With birthdays, I always make and decorate the boys' cakes. We also have the parties at our house. I think it's a lot more fun than parties held at some location. When the kids are little, I pick the cake themes based on their interests but, as they get older, I take the kids' requests for theme or type of cake.

    I'm going to end this before this turns into a post of it's own but feel free to ask questions if you want.

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    2. This is a great post Mrs G that has got my mind spinning in new and interesting directions. It has been hard to think of things like making new traditions with the current crazy but someday soon.

      I totally love your idea of doing something special on LEAP day. I'm stealing it for sure. Now what to do?

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  2. Happy Leap Year day!! :) (Albeit a day late, lol) Sorry to hear Ginny's not well and that dinner had a mishap! :s As for family traditions, we have christmas ones, like always having breakfast at CB's parents' house and opening presents there, watching The Polar Express, etc. But I'm trying to think if we have other traditions really or not.....definitely something I want to have as the baby grows up, that's for sure. : )
    p.s. Glad you could rant about my rant on my last post!! :0)

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  3. My favorite tradition was celebrating my little brother's birthday. He was born Dec. 15 so on the 15th we'd go out to eat as a family and then we'd pick out our Christmas tree, take it home, and decorate it. Since Ruby's birthday is Dec 17th I look forward to having a similar tradition with her :)

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