Traditions

I love traditions.  Growing up in my family there were a lot of times of change.  That also meant that traditions often changed.  As a result there are few traditions that I can remember as being an always, never changing do it every year tradition.  The one that most comes to mind for me is Christmas pajamas.  We always got to open one gift on Christmas Eve and that gift was always new pajamas.  Which of course always meant a posed picture in front of the tree that never turned out well no matter how many times we tried (and often ended up with fighting, yelling and/or crying).  Oh the memories.

 So then why do I love traditions?  Because to me a tradition is a constant.  Something that you can count on no matter what in a world that is forever changing.  They are something to look forward to.  And they are comfortable like your favorite old pair of jeans.  Traditions can be the best of life with those who are most important in your life.  And now I love starting traditions and what I love even more is that the ones I started them with love them as much as I do.  These two would never in a million years let me forget one of our traditions, sometimes even ones they have made up themselves.  Our first tradition came when Alivia was just 2 years old.  Every year we make a gingerbread house.  After the first year Alivia wouldn't make one with anyone else because she knew she would do one with me.  Now it is three of them and I usually enlist some help but I love this tradition and look forward to it every year.




This weekend was full of some of our other traditions.  Every year we go and the girls pick out as many pumpkins as they can convince me to buy with begging, pleading and looking as cute as they can possibly make themselves look.  Lets just say they usually end up with more than they can carry.  We have tried some different things to decorate the pumpkins but usually we just paint them.  Over the years the girls have added some things to our fall tradition.  Now we have to make sugar cookie cutouts and decorate them with about 6 tons of sprinkles and most recently they added decorating by coloring every inch of the 2 sets of sliding doors in the front of my house with window markers.







I love these traditions and wouldn't have it any other way.  I'm thankful that the girls want to do these things with me year after year and hope that never changes.  Nothing fills my heart more than spending time with these guys and I can't wait to see how they grow up.