create family traditions

Tonight was “indoor picnic night.” It all started out well until something I hadn’t considered happened. Our dog liked the indoor picnic too! The kids were using cookie cutters on the jello (on the table cloth on the floor) and it turns out our dog likes jello too. We had to move our picnic to the basement (dog is too old to climb the stairs). It was cold down there but picnics are usually too hot or too cold anyway, right? The kids had a blast.

The Boat Parade was great too. That will become a family tradition in itself. We invited over some neighbors with kids and had a little dinner party until the boats came by. Then we all abandoned our plates and ran outside to chase the boats along the beach. The neighbors had a huge bonfire and lots of treats. It was really fun. Andy added to the festivities by lighting off a few roman candles. I think the boat skippers appreciated our enthusiasm.

Advent calendar has taken a bit of organization but well worth the effort.

Karsten woke up this morning and the first thing he said was “do I get to pick a number?” I said “yes, #1.” He ran downstairs to get it. He made me read “Make hot chocolate with all the toppings.” He was so excited he took the little piece of paper and put it under his pillow so we wouldn’t forget it for after dinner.

Cool.

The con: Britta wanted to grab a number too. I saw her in the corner with #11 clutched in her fist. She didn’t understand that tomorrow it would be her turn to pick #2. Maybe I’ll have to make duplicates so each kid can pick? Ugh. I don’t want to spend the time doing it. I’ll give it another day and see what happens.

We’re still nursing our Halloween candy so instead of filling the advent calendar with even more candy I found a website that had an idea of an advent calendar of activities instead. I used a few of their suggestions and then created some of my own. Some days are more elaborate than others, depending on if I have to work that day or not. Other activities are things we’d probably be doing anyway but now I had to get organized about it and set a date for when it is going to happen.

Here’s my list:
1. Make hot chocolate with all the toppings
2. Watch the Christmas boat parade
3. Have a dance party
4. Have an indoor picnic
5. Write letters to Santa Claus
6. Go see Santa Claus
7. Wrap a toy for charity
8. Drive up the mountains
9. Make a snow angel
10. Use puppets to tell a bedtime story
11. Go out for ice cream at the B-Town-Scoop
12. Call Bestemor and FarFar and sing Christmas carols
13. Make gift tags
14. Have breakfast for dinner
15. Go to a Christmas party
16. Get a Christmas tree
17. Drive around looking at Christmas lights
18. Have a Norwegian BBQ
19. Call Grandma and Grandpa and Grandma Pat and sing christmas carols.
20. Make Christmas Cookies
21. Decorate Christmas cookies
22. Spend the night at Grandma and Granpa’s house
23. Make popcorn and watch a Christmas movie
24. TBD!! Any ideas? This is the day we usually do something big to celebrate.

Note that grandma and grandpa make the list a few times. Hopefully their schedules will be obliging!

Karsten and PJ are already bugging me to open #1. Karsten is still talking about candy… let’s hope “activities” are good enough for these guys and the candy aspect will be forgotten.

Attempted homemade pizza dough turned out too tough to even roll out. Maybe my yeast was bad? Maybe I shouldn’t have substituted wheat flour for white? Who knows, but I had to quickly make enchiladas instead. The kids started going into hunger melt-downs while waiting for new meal.

Right before the enchiladas came out of the oven Karsten did a couch dive right into the coffee table. He scraped a good 3 inches of skin off his nose, maybe even broke his nose, we can’t decide. My dad and brother have both broken their nose so I suppose it is my son’s turn, although it is a little tough to picture my 4 year old with a crooked, bumpy nose. Tomorrow when I peel off the Garfield bandaid I’ll assess potential cartlidge damage.

I finally got Karsten to eat 3 bites of his enchilada and then we put in the Star Wars movie. Mean mommy made the boys turn it off before it was over because it was going past bedtime!

I didn’t even get to watch any of the movie because I realized my taxes needed to be done for the accountant by tomorrow.

But I’m still excited for this new family tradition to start. Next time: Boboli pizza and get an earlier start on the movie.

I just got back from Norway and was inspired by the amount of little traditions the Norwegians have for celebrating Christmas.

For lunch one day we had porridge and one serving had an almond hidden in it. The lucky person who found the almond in their porridge won the chocolate marzipan pig. Later that night the porridge was made into a rice pudding dessert. The Jule Nissa got his own serving of porridge too and when it disappeared from the front porch the kids knew the Nissa would soon be delivering his packages.

I guess some of the traditions were similar to the ones we Americans have for Christmas but seeing another culture celebrate made me realize how special and fun everything is for the children.

This year I’m going to attempt to add some special touches to our holiday celebrations that I can hopefully carry on from year to year. Being consistent will be the hard part.