Traditions

I love traditions. There's nothing like a good, comfortable ritual to get you feeling the holiday (whichever holiday that might be...) spirit. No doubt, the idea of having "traditions" was realized through a peaceful agreement between the sentimentalists of the world and...the slackers.

It is so nice to have something special to look forward to every year; an activity that marks the passage of time and gives a point of comparison from year to year. Something you can share with your loved ones and pass on from generation to generation. Something that reminds you about the real meaning of the holiday.

But...it's also nice not having to reinvent that Christmas/birthday/

Valentine's Day wheel every year. A planning slacker's paradise. For example, this year Spencer and I went rock climbing on my birthday. Why, you ask? Oh, because we did it last year and it was fun. Why mess with perfection? Why put in unnecessary effort when whatever you did last year can be easily recycled this year? Say hello to the birth of an unintended "tradition."

With that said, this past holiday season, Spencer and I (mostly me...because I'm obsessive like that...) spent a lot of time trying to discover our "dream" traditions. This came about, I believe, mostly because it was the first time in our five Christmases together that we would be waking up Christmas morning in our own place instead of a family member's.

To me, this felt like some kind of rite of passage. I took it as a sign that I needed to figure out the holidays completely and spend ridiculous amounts of time researching traditions. Because really, as discussed earlier, if you do it right just one time, you are set for decades. :)

We'll start with Thanksgiving. I might as well just admit that I did not spend as much time contemplating Thanksgiving traditions as I should have. Sigh. Thanksgiving; such an under appreciated holiday. The mere fact that it is the least commercialized holiday I know of merits extra recognition and attention. Next year, I'm sure.

As it was, we mostly just piggy-backed on the Warnick's traditions. Grace did run in the Toddler Turkey Trot down Lane Ave, but that was about it. But, hey, the Warnicks' traditions are fabulous, so it was still a win-win situation.

We were lucky to have lots of family come to Columbus this year. Our Merkley cousins, Sarah and Hannah, and their families as well as good old Sam, Emily, and Alex joined us for a few days. Terri, a lady from our ward, also got in on the fun. The dinner was fabulous and my small contributions paled in comparison to the feast the Warnicks produced. As such, they shall not be mentioned. :)

The post-Thanksgiving dinner gingerbread house making was a hit. My goal was to cover mine with as much candy as possible, so I could happily snack on it later. Spencer's goal, as always, was a little more ambitious.
And now, on to Christmas! Not all of the traditions that I tried to implement this year were successful. Perhaps we were suffering from tradition overkill, but we definitely found some keepers. We went to see the Thomas the Train Christmas display at the downtown library.

We braved the cold in order to experience "Zoo Lights" at the Columbus Zoo.

It was totally worth it. Grace made friends with a wolf. Two seconds before this was taken, the wolf had her front paws perched up on the window, staring into Grace's face.

However, most of our new traditions do not come accompanied by a picture. During the entire month of December, Spencer and I wrote down little compliments/(things we'd noticed the other doing that we appreciated) on slips of paper and put them in each other's stockings. On Christmas morning, we got to read them all. This one went swimmingly. I'd forgotten how good Spencer is at writing love notes. (blush...)

We also tried implementing a 12 days of Christmas service project. It involved doing at least one little act of service for someone outside of our family every day from December 13th-24th. We sort of accomplished this. We went to the temple, delivered lots of Christmas treats, cleaned some public areas, took cookies to the house in the neighborhood with the best lights, and wrote some thank you notes. The delivering of Christmas treats extended to far more than one day, so we counted it multiple times. Cheating. We'll do better next year.

Insert random pictures from Christmas:

Also, thanks to a friend's blog, we started a Christmas story reading tradition. I wrapped 12 Christmas-related stories for Grace (most of which I just picked up from the library) and let her open one each morning during the 12 days leading up to Christmas. Obviously, I seem to have a thing for the number 12. This tradition was a great success as far as Grace was concerned and it got her really excited about present-opening in general.

However, "someone" could have done a better job at screening the stories. (read: me) The culminating story, opened on Christmas Eve nonetheless, ended up being "Hark, the Aardvark Angels Sing." A bit anti-climactic, needless to say.

And lame. Lame, lame, lame.

You know, there is an amazing number of truly terrible Christmas stories for children out there. But, whatever. The title seemed appealing to me when I was just trying to get out of the library. :) Again, I'll do better next year.

We hosted the Warnicks, a sweet lady from our ward, and our neighbor Jennifer for Christmas Eve. There, we served Japatis (Spencer's African special), performed a live Nativity, and painted little, wooden Christmas ornaments (another stolen Warnick tradition). All in all, it was a fabulous Christmas.

I look forward to not planning for it next year. :)