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Thursday, November 7, 2013

Traditionally

We're not huge on holiday traditions in our family. Sure, we decorate for the major holidays and I've even started making an attempt to do a little decorating for what I consider "Hallmark holidays," like Valentine's Day.  We just don't have a lot of things that we do year in and year out just because "it's a tradition."  Some years, we go to a Fall Festival and pumpkin patch to pick out Halloween pumpkins and some years (like this year) we buy them from a random roadside stand.  Some years I make my famous pumpkin roll for Thanksgiving dessert and some years I decide it's too much work and buy pumpkin pie from the grocery store.  Some years I bake cookies and make candy for the holidays and some years I don't feel like it.  You get the idea.

Over the years, I've often wondered if I'm doing a disservice to my kids by not having more family traditions that they can count on.  It's hard when you see hundreds of Facebook and blog posts with everyone's yearly traditions on display to not think that you might be missing out on something.

Yesterday, I was driving Lily home from soccer practice when she mentioned that while she was kind of excited for her soccer tournament Thanksgiving weekend at Disney's Wide World of Sports, she was kind of bummed about it too.  When I asked why she said that it was because we were going to have to miss Thanksgiving.  For the last few years, we have stayed home on Thanksgiving and watched the Macy's parade, then football and had my two single brothers-in-law over for Thanksgiving dinner.  Sometimes we cap it off by watching A Christmas Story that night to get in the holiday spirit.  We barely get out of our pajamas all day and it's pretty glorious, if I do say so myself.

I reminded Lily that we weren't actually going to miss Thanksgiving this year, we were just going to go to her grandmother's house instead and then leave to go out of town from there.  I was a little surprised when she lamented that "It just isn't going to be the same!" because I had also thought to myself that I was a little bummed that we weren't going to be able to do our low-key Thanksgiving celebration this year.  Maybe we have more holiday traditions than I thought.

3 comments:

  1. We really don't have set traditions. I do prefer low key Thanksgivings though.

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  2. Thanksgiving is the one holiday we don't get out of our pajamas either. It's free day off work and school and we take full advantage by being stuffed with turkey and lazy.

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  3. i have the day off today for veteran's day and am pretty much loving that i'm sleeping in, still in my PJs, with no plans to do anything at all.

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