Birthdays- ah , the festivities. We do... a b-day poster with pictures and things about the child and hang it up in the kitchen the week before their birthday. We also wrap their presents and put them up on the mantle or the piano the week before (my mom thinks this is mean and tortures the child but they love it, it creates anticipation)We take them on a date with mom and dad, a family fun activity, wake up the child singing happy birthday and have donuts the day of, and of course the party! Our kids have a choice of a friend party OR an extra gift from mom and dad. I like when they choose the gift!
General Family- Family dinner! 95% of the time we sit down and have family dinner and while we eat we go around the table and tell what the best parts of our days were, the other 5% we eat upstairs in front of TV (I know, very bad!) :) We try very hard to do scripture study everyday after dinner, and family prayers morning and night (definitely not perfect at this yet but we never give up!) Tom and I take turns (usually weekly) taking a child out on a date. They get to pick the activity. Truly worth the effort, we and the kids love it! We also try to do a family activity every week. Tom is a good story teller and will tell stories to the kids before bed, it's funny when they ask me to tell a story and I can't do it well at all, ...crickets chirp.
Sundays- we go to church :), have a big family meal (usually right after church if I am on top of things), go for a walk or a drive, visit with other family members, watch family videos, have FHE, and we love to have cheese, crackers, and fruit for dinner. And much more frequently than I'd like to admit I love my Sunday afternoon naps! :)
Family Home Evening- we do ours on Sundays for now, while I am working. We copied a few ideas from our friends (the Stewarts) when we attended one of their FHE. We have a child conduct, using Savannah's Karaoke machine as a mic, it is so cute to watch this. We also added "Daddy's Corner" where Tom does a mini-lesson on a topic and we focus on it during the week and report back. We do opening and closing prayers, songs, a game, a lesson (from the scriptures), and everyone's favorite part...treats! We use our puppet theatre frequently, made by grandma, to teach lessons about the scriptures.
July 4th- We get up at 5am and go to the Provo Balloon Festival, get McDonalds breakfast and drive up into the mountains. We buy fireworks and light them off in front of our house, or go watch the "big fireworks show". In the past we have also gone swimming. This year we started a new tradition, taking the ski lift up Sundance Resort, it was awesome!!!
July 4th- We get up at 5am and go to the Provo Balloon Festival, get McDonalds breakfast and drive up into the mountains. We buy fireworks and light them off in front of our house, or go watch the "big fireworks show". In the past we have also gone swimming. This year we started a new tradition, taking the ski lift up Sundance Resort, it was awesome!!!
Christmas-We take the kids to Temple Square, do a carriage ride, and get hot chocolate. Participate in a service project, go to Festival of Trees, Christmas Eve we do a pinata (one year when the kids were very little we had a Rudolph one and when we broke it open the girls totally cried saying "you killed rudolph", it was sad but the candy comforted them! We have a big candle lit dinner, the kids get to open their PJ's from mom (that I made), we do a lesson about the Birth of Christ, the kids draw a picture with their name on it to mark their place for Santa to put their gifts, we watch a Christmas Carol (my favorite is the Muppet one!), and drive around to see everyone's Christmas lights. Christmas morning we turn on the fire, Tom rings a bell and says "Santa's come" and the kids get to come downstairs and open gifts. One tradition from my family I would like to do is have the stockings at the end of each child's bed. The reason we haven't done it yet is because Tom doesn't want to miss anything (when it's on the end of the bed the kids can open it whenever they want... I remember waking up at 4am to open mine!) We then have a late breakfast at my mom's house, if we are in Utah, and have English Crackers (the fancy wrapped napkin things that you pull apart, they pop, and there is a prize and a paper crown, everyone wears their crowns!) then we stay and my mom makes a big dinner. On boxing day, at Tom's parents house, we have a treasure hunt with the Speak and Spell, remember those?! Everyone runs around following the clues and eventually we find the treasure, gifts! One tradition we loved doing at Tom's house is bringing a meal to the homeless shelter in Santa Fe on Christmas Eve, serving and eating with the people there.
New Years Eve-we love to take the kids to a local hotel for one night and just swim in the pool and have fun together!
Fall/Halloween-caramel apples, picking pumpkins and carving, making leaf collages, decorating and crafts, and watching halloween movies like Corpse Bride, Nightmare before Christmas...
Easter-we do our "gentile" activities (dyeing eggs, candy hunt, baskets) on Saturday and a lesson focusing on the reason for Easter, our Savior, on Sunday.
St. Patrick's Day-ALL green dinner, usually green pancakes or waffles, green drinks, green eggs, green muffins...
Beginning of School Year-Tom gives the kids a father's blessing. I also want to steal Mindy's idea of doing banana splits, 3 huge scoops and a bunch of toppings! Totally awesome idea!
End of School Year-I haven't started anything yet so if anyone has some great ideas to share...
General Conference-Besides watching conference... we go into the mountains in between sessions. With conference coming up does anyone have some fun ideas to keep kids entertained for the 8 hours? My kids are getting older so they can watch and have a conference packet or something. I would love to hear what works for you!
Now what are your family traditions?
New Years Eve-we love to take the kids to a local hotel for one night and just swim in the pool and have fun together!
Fall/Halloween-caramel apples, picking pumpkins and carving, making leaf collages, decorating and crafts, and watching halloween movies like Corpse Bride, Nightmare before Christmas...
Easter-we do our "gentile" activities (dyeing eggs, candy hunt, baskets) on Saturday and a lesson focusing on the reason for Easter, our Savior, on Sunday.
St. Patrick's Day-ALL green dinner, usually green pancakes or waffles, green drinks, green eggs, green muffins...
Beginning of School Year-Tom gives the kids a father's blessing. I also want to steal Mindy's idea of doing banana splits, 3 huge scoops and a bunch of toppings! Totally awesome idea!
End of School Year-I haven't started anything yet so if anyone has some great ideas to share...
General Conference-Besides watching conference... we go into the mountains in between sessions. With conference coming up does anyone have some fun ideas to keep kids entertained for the 8 hours? My kids are getting older so they can watch and have a conference packet or something. I would love to hear what works for you!
Now what are your family traditions?
6 comments:
I like having the traditions down on paper. You know there are programs where you can upload your bloggind and they will bind it all up for you in a book. Handy, this is what I call my journal.
I am so looking forward to having traditions with my own children, as for Ken and I, I don't think we have any yet, at least none I can think of. However, there is one thing I want to do for sure - a family holiday. Pick one day off the calendar that is your special family day - take the day off of school/work and have your own national holiday.
Sally, I am so impressed. I love that you normally do a weekly date with one of your kids. What a great tradition. I love how each kid in your family gets treated extra special on his/her birthday. General conference...I always print a conference bingo sheet off for them. When they hear one of the words on the sheet, they put a jelly bean or M&M covering the square. When they get a bingo, they can eat all the candies and start over. I normally do a General Conference bingo search on Google to find a new sheet each time.
My mother in law sends the kids a bingo game for conference. They pay attention so they can mark off stuff on the bingo cards (like temple, savior, etc.)
What is family home evening? LOL
Every Valentine's Day, we make cookies and give our neighbors "heart attacks." We doorbell ditch the house and leave cookies with a note telling them we have given them a "heart attack" because we love them so much. We have lots of lonely widows in our circle, so it is fun to see their faces. Of course we hide and watch, and I am sure they hear the kids giggling.
The end of the school year I break out the tents and let the kids have a bar b que. I used to let them have sleepovers, but now it is usually a late night. We open up the pool and hot tub around then, so they invite a bunch of kids over. Now that they are old enough for co-ed, not so sure that is a good idea!!!
Christmas Eve we have a big dinner that we can reheat the next day for leftovers because it is such a busy day. I do a ham, usually, as it is good cold on the rolls we have left over for a sandwich.
We go to Ryan's mom's house for Thanksgiving.
The other holidays are mostly the same. Birthdays I do the same but without the poster. I am WAY too lazy for that..... and I buy the cakes from Costco... :)
Oh, and we go out to dinner for Family Birthday on Dec. 5. That is the day the older kids were adopted by Ryan and we became a legal "family."
Growing up we always did a quiz after conference. We could take notes during and then my mom would ask us questions afterwards. There was candy for correct answers. It was fun and we paid attention so we could get some treats.
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