Holiday Traditions

With Easter coming up in a couple weeks, I have been thinking a lot about family traditions. I am definately not very creative, and with a husband who prides himself in "under" celebrating all holidays, I find it kind of difficult to come up with many unique traditions for our family. I personally think traditions are one of the things that makes life worth while, so I am constantly trying to make a fuss over every and all special occasions. Here are a few things we do at our house (I admit most of them are things that everyone does, but they are still fun):

Easter: We dye Easter eggs, have an egg hunt Easter morning (Dad hides all the eggs sometimes in very difficult places), I make my yummy brown-sugar ham (this year with scalloped potatoes hopefully), and the Easter bunny fills the baskets with candy, toys, and a new book for each child.


Christmas: We take the kids to look at lights, make a gingerbread house (although, I am not sure I want to continue this one, since it is usually more of a nightmare than anything), open one present on Christmas eve, we all get a box secretly left on our pillows sometime during Christmas Eve filled with new PJs, pick out a "real" Christmas tree and decorate it together, all the kids get special Christmas clothes for Christmas sunday (hopefully made by Grandma Kurki), everyone gets their picture taken with all their presents, I stress over a huge turkey dinner with all the trimmings.



Halloween: Trunk or Treat at church, visit the pumpkin patch for pictures etc., trick-or-treat around the neighborhood, a visit to the corn maze, and a new tradition I want to start is watching the movie "Clue" after the kids go to bed (I am NOT a scary movie watcher).





Thanksgiving: This is one holiday that needs work. Since Canadian Thanksgiving is different than American Thanksgiving, I have a hard time with it. I never want to make a turkey so close to Christmas, so we started buying a rosted chicken and then making stuffing, potatoes, brussel sprouts etc. That is the extent of if for me. I also try to tell the story about the pilgrims (quite hilarious, since every year I have to look it up online, because I forget how it all went).


Wedding Anniversary: We always get sparkling cider and cheesecake (since they had that in our hotel our first night after we got married). We also have a no present pact since our anniversary is so close to Christmas. We try to go somewhere fun rather than spending money on gifts.