Family Traditions

I am grateful for family traditions. I am grateful for the ones I grew up with. From birthday breakfast doughnuts to Christmas with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins to waking up way too early to say family prayers before Amy and Chris left for their 6:30 am Seminary class. (Okay, that last one was not my favorite one. I've never been much of a morning person, but looking back I'm grateful that my dad would get me up every morning even though I didn't feel that way in the moment. Sorry Dad!) Big and small, our family traditions are some of my strongest memories. Because of them, I looked forward to creating them with my own family. 

We are slowly refining our family traditions, especially our holiday traditions, into something that works for our family. We originally had very different plans for our Thanksgiving dinner and they weren't going to be particularly traditional except for the fact that we were going to be together as a family and we were probably going to have a pie for dessert. Since I was sick and my tastebuds weren't as sharp as they usually are, we switched it to the Thanksgiving feast Snoopy makes. It was perfect! I'm grateful that our holiday wasn't ruined because it wasn't the traditional meal. It will probably be one of our most memorable ones because it worked perfectly for us that day. Jonathan made the meal in minutes and we were able to spend the day relaxing together.

Traditions are very important, but when they can't be adapted to circumstances than they rule over us and don't foster unity. That's the balance we are aiming for. I look forward to finding out what works for us.