Traditions

You would think plain ol' Cheerios would be a bland enough breakfast for the little one... but, alas, I find myself back in bed after the baby pushed the eject button on my cereal. "Try Again!" she says. So I have the laptop in bed so I can type while I recover before my next attempt at starting this day (I love that my church has a noon service, and that we get to set our clocks back today).

All this baby stuff has got me reflecting on traditions. Which ones should we pass on and which ones should we start new? My family doesn't have a lot of traditions in the traditional sense. When I graduated from grad school I decided I was going to have my first "traditional party." I thought it would be pretty exotic and funny for my family if we celebrated with cake and punch and a bowl of mints or nuts. I thought we could even have a basket for cards and all of that boring stuff. I just wanted to try something normal for once in my life. It turned out almost as traditional as I had hoped... except Grant insisted we serve deviled eggs too. We didn't have a basket for cards, or mints or nuts either. And the punch was a pretty wacky concoction. And the cake was homemade instead of from Hy-Vee (an Iowa grocery store where people get their graduation cakes). Other than that...it was pretty traditional.

Even though my family celebrates holidays slightly different each year, and is constantly changing they way we do things, we still have some pretty great traditions.

For an example, my dad would occasionally (and still does) rent a movie from Jim's Video that no one had ever heard of, and we'd watch it... but I don't remember the movies so much as the popcorn. Not that microwaved stuff... air popped, or stove popped with hot melted butter drizzled over it, always in the big yellow bowl. We'd wash it down with lemonade (pink if we were lucky). My favorite part of the tradition was sneaking the left over stale popcorn for breakfast the next day. This tradition is definitely a keeper. Last night I was thinking about this one and made popcorn. Unfortunately, I ate way too much, and there are no leftovers this morning.

There are many other wonderful nontraditional-traditions that my family practices. I'll have to stay attuned to them so I can be sure to select the good ones to pass along. If you are reading this and you are a part of my family... tell me what traditions you like and think we should continue. If you are reading this and you are not part of my family, tell me what traditions you have that would be great to begin. I'm collecting traditions. It's less overwhelming than collecting baby gear... which I have not even begun to think about considering starting yet.