I’ve been thinking a lot about how little I remember of things we did as a family in my childhood and I realized that I wanted my kids to remember more. Is it that I was forgetful? I’m not sure, but I did have a light bulb moment: most of the things I do remember are memories that were recurring.
Recurring moments are what I would like to call ‘traditions’. I started recollecting all the ‘traditions’ our family has created so far. We love our traditions and I’m so glad we’ve been consistent with them.
Here are some of the ‘traditions’ that our family has:
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Friday Family Movie Night
Every Friday (unless we have visitors or something creeps up), we have a movie night. The kids look forward to this all week and they take turns picking the movie for the week. We don’t generally go out for movies so it’s an inexpensive family activity that kids enjoy.
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Birthday cake w/choice of favorite food and event
After having a few parties and realizing our family didn’t have the time or the financial margin to put parties together, we opted to celebrate with just the immediate family. The kids pick out a cake that they’d like me to bake, a restaurant (or choice of food) and an activity (within reason: budget). We make it a weekend long celebration by spreading it out. They plan for what they want ALL YEAR!!
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Opening of birthday gift on birthday morning
In addition to their birthday celebration, they get a birthday gift. On their birthday morning, we pray over them and they open their gift.
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Monkey Bread and Sausage Roll for Christmas morning
Christmas morning is lazy at our house. We’ve just completed Christmas services at church so we sleep in. Since most of our Christmases are at home, we cook a pretty big Christmas lunch so instead of cooking for breakfast too, we buy frozen monkey bread and frozen sausage rolls and heat it up! I’m sure it’s super unhealthy but so yummy! You get both the sweet and savory without rolling up your sleeves and the best part is using paper plates.
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3 gifts for Christmas, along with the Bible story
Another Christmas tradition that we learned from a friend years ago is putting a limit on the number of gifts kids expect for Christmas. As parents, we’ve taught our kids that if Jesus only got 3 gifts, they can’t expect anymore than that.
After breakfast, we read the Bible story about the birth of Christ and pray together before we open our gifts. Surprisingly, our kids have learned a lot of patience over the years and now, even our littlest doesn’t have a problem waiting.
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Treats from the Asian stores
Our family loves the occasional trip to Asian stores. We don’t go often but when we do, we don’t leave without pocky sticks (from the Vietnamese store) or either Bourbon chocolate biscuits, some samosas, and dal fritters with some cane & ginger juice (from the Indian store). It’s always a treat to visit ethnic stores.
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Candy donation for Halloween
Each Halloween, our kids get so much candy! We never know what to do with it. I definitely don’t want my kids to eat all of it and throwing it away seems such a waste. Instead, we’ve learned that sharing goes a long way. Here’s a post I wrote about donating candy.
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Toy clean out 2-3x a year
Every few months, we have our kids go through all the toys they have and separate what they still want and play with from those that are broken or that they don’t want anymore. We donate the ones they’ve grown out of that are still in good condition and trash the rest. This helps us not only keep the junk in our house to a minimum (easier to keep clean) but helps our kids actively engaged in thinking through how they can be generous and not ‘hoard’ things. We do something similar with clothes too.
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Dinner after a school play
We will find any reason to celebrate – especially if it means we get to eat out! After every school play, we celebrate our stars by having dinner at a smelly restaurant. It’s a chain restaurant that I won’t name but an older establishment that may be the cause of its smelliness. The upside is that the kids get meals for a $1 if they dine in so Alan and I have come to endure the smell and enjoy it. We’ve done it so often that the kids were so sad when we suggested a different spot. (sigh)
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An annual photo album
A few years ago, we put an album book together, reflecting a full 12 months and had it printed as a book. We can’t tell you how many times the kids have looked through it. So obviously, we decided it’s something we wanted to continue doing. Photos are a great way to help us remember our shared experiences and moments each year. Now, we’ve done it for 4-5 years straight!
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Family Day Celebration
‘Family Day’ is what some would refer to as ‘Gotcha Day’. Family Day suits us better since it’s the day we became a family with the addition of Gabi. It was a day that not only changed her life, but ours. We only have one adopted child so we haven’t had to think of what it would be with multiples! We celebrate this day with a dessert and some time to go over photos and stories of the day we got her.
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Pictures of the first day of school
Now, this is a given. We take pictures of our kids’ first day of school but because we do this, I stopped purchasing school pictures. After a year or two of purchasing school pictures and tucking them away somewhere, I realized I was wasting money. I refuse to frame and hang up corny school pictures.. it was always a hit or miss with them. We take tons of pictures throughout the year so I didn’t miss not having school pictures. First day of school pictures are always fun to compare.
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Green Chili Mac n’ Cheese for LifeGroup (our community) night
I recently mentioned this in a podcast where I feed the kids their favorite mac n’cheese dish on Mondays. It’s not every Monday but almost every Monday when our small group gets together. When they don’t get green chili mac n’cheese on a Monday, they know that there’s no LifeGroup that night. 😉
Traditions are a way to build attachment and bonding in families, while creating lasting memories. I’m sure each family has traditions that they’re not even aware of! I know things may change as kids get older but hopefully, they’ll remember these moments and treasure them. ❤️
