family traditions

[Jade]

What traditions does your family uphold? Or what things do you do together on a regular basis?

Weekly biblestudy?

Sing a song before supper?

Family movie day?

Something else?

[Salus]

We have a couple things we do as traditions. First we always try to eat a family meal together and we say grace before we start eating. We also have scheduled that every Friday is family game night and we rotate which kid gets to chose a board game for that night. Last week my wife and I tried teaching Monopoly to our 6 y/o and 4 y/o. It was HILARIOUS trying to play with them.

[Rubia Warren]

I don't know if this qualifies as a "tradition", but I'll post it here, anyway. I have 3 kids, ages 3, 5, and 6, and sibling rivalry runs rampant in our house. So, recently, I began having a "picker" every day, rotating the turns so everybody gets one. The picker gets to pick out everything- even down to their seat at the dinner table and what color cup they will drink out of. The picker picks out everything, and they also pass out things to everyone. (The bickering over these petty things was unbelievable before I did this).
Also, in the wintertime, we take the kids to McDonald's to play inside every friday.

[Salus]

La Rubia, nice "picker" idea! I hope you don't mind if I borrow your idea. I have a 6, 4, and 2 y/o and they constantly drive each other (and mommy and daddy) nuts.

[Xmansmommy]

Jade,
Great topic! When I was LDS we had what was called "Family Home Evening" which basically was, a night (usually Monday, but could be any day) dedicated to spending time together as a family. Where each family member would take time out of their busy schedule to make family a priority. The night could include any means of spending time together, but spiritual things were definately encouraged. I also read with them on a regular basis. Now that I am a Christian, I do still encouarge family time together. Bible reading/study is very important to me and I am leading my family in making it important to them as well. I'm learning to teach them how to pray. While I don't fully grasp prayer, I do communicate with God any time, any where, and I think it is having a positive affect on them as well.
On a less serious note however, I try to have a "mother-daughter day" with each individual daughter where we just spend time together. We can talk, go out to lunch, go to a movie, go shopping etc. where we simply be together. I encourage them to share their thoughts, dreams, fears, etc. during these times as well as other times too. But these times are special, in that they give each individual child special time alone with mom. And for Xman, he gets all my attention so we don't have a "mother-son" day yet. I don't know how that will work out in the future....wish me luck! LOL :brow:

[Irish]

Well, I'm an atheist, but one of the traditions we uphold is the grace before the meal. We also attend church. After every PTA program, we go out for ice cream.

[NSMinistries]

In my family we name each girl born with a "L" Name. Like Lizabeth, Lora, Lucy, etc... I was lucky and married a Linda!!! This goes back as far as a couple hundred years.

[Xmansmommy]

Awesome NSM! I know many people that have traditions such as yours in naming their children. And Linda is a cool name :xmm: :thumb:

[graceinme]

In our family we don't celebrate Halloween, so our tradition is........Every Halloween I let my kids pick out two big bags of candy each, then we go to KFC, then we stay home watch movies, and don't answer the door.





:gim: Love Grace

[Xmansmommy]

:rofl: Sounds yummy!

[Gabby]

I think this is a great thread so I'm bumping it. :bump:

We don't have alot of traditions really, but one thing that we do do is when one of our children has a birthday we let them choose the activities of the day. We don't do parties but they can bring along a friend for the day if it is possible. So they can choose where we eat, what movie to watch and if we watch one, ect.

We also do a childrens year through the Bible bible reading every evening after supper. My son is now doing the readings sometimes.

chris

[Rubia Warren]

When we put our Christmas tree up, we all do it together and we have to listen to Elvis's Christmas album. We gyrate, too. Seriously.

Christmas...... CHristmas........ CHristmas...... Well, it's christmastime, pretty baby..... and the snow is fallin' down (christmas...).... well it's christmastime pretty baby....... and the snow is fallin all around.........

[Gabby]

When we put our Christmas tree up, we all do it together and we have to listen to Elvis's Christmas album. We gyrate, too. Seriously.

Christmas...... CHristmas........ CHristmas...... Well, it's christmastime, pretty baby..... and the snow is fallin' down (christmas...).... well it's christmastime pretty baby....... and the snow is fallin all around.........


:hehe:

[Carpedm9587]

Wow - cool thread. I too am atheist, though my wife is Christian. We tend to be a "take it as it comes family" and don't have a LOT of regularity to our schedule. But we do have a few traditions.

We do have a Christmas tree, and every year when we take it down we cut of a couple small branches, strip off the needles, and add them to the bag of needles we use to cover the manger floor. So the manger has a small piece of every Christmas tree we have had since we were married.

I have a tradition that relates to my family. Every year, my wife and children get to "own dad" for an overnight on or around their birthday. They get to pick what they would like to do as an over-night one-on-one activity. My eldest usually picks going to a hotel at the local ski area and skiing for both days, and then either swimming at the pool, dining somewhere, and/or playing games in our hotel room for the rest of the evening. My youngest tends to pick the hotel and just swimming. My wife picks... ummm... picks various things.

Then I have some "discipline" traditions. If my boys start fighting over something, I always ask them if they would like me to settle the fight for them. They have come to know that I always settle the fight by taking the object in dispute, so they are strongly motivated to find a way to solve the problem.

If they are just fighting and bickering, they are asked to sit down in separate chairs in the same room and be silent. I place no time limit on that event. They are free to get up as soon as they can work on their problem without being rude or bickering. That puts them in complete control of it. I have been amazed to discover that they intuitively know what they need. Sometimes they get up right away, sometimes they sit for 15 minutes and then get up. But they both have to agree they are ready to proceed without rudeness, hitting, or bickering before either can get up.

The rest of the things folks have mentioned all happen, just not with any regularity. We ski when we want to ski, do a game night when we want to do a game night, eat together when we want to eat together, and so forth.

I'm going to remember the "picker" idea, though. We haven't seen a lot of sibling rivalry - but it's an awesome solution if it surfaces!

Michel

[themuzicman]

What traditions does your family uphold? Or what things do you do together on a regular basis?

Weekly biblestudy?

Sing a song before supper?

Family movie day?

Something else?
When the kids were younger, I'd get up on Christmas morning (usually 6-7am, depending on how long they let me sleep), and make "Dad's world famous bacon and eggs", which was essenitally bacon cut into 1" pieces, cooked, and then scrambled into scrambled eggs. We'd usually have blueberry muffins, too.

Well, since the kids started getting older, they've started joining the cooking. We usually have some kind of pancakes, and I make a cake called "pajama cake" (which I used to have as a kid for sunday morning breakfast), and usually bran or blueberry muffins, and sometimes the other kids will pitch in with a little something or other, such that everyone (except mom) is involved in preparing breakfast really early on Christmas morning.

it was originally a way to keep the kids in bed until early breakfast (since Dad had to get up and make breakfast, there was a delay between the waking up and the opening of Christmas presents, thus, they weren't up at 4am), but now it's a fun tradition to get Dad and the kids into the kitchen for some cooking fun.

Michael

[Carpedm9587]

When the kids were younger, I'd get up on Christmas morning (usually 6-7am, depending on how long they let me sleep), and make "Dad's world famous bacon and eggs", which was essenitally bacon cut into 1" pieces, cooked, and then scrambled into scrambled eggs. We'd usually have blueberry muffins, too.

Well, since the kids started getting older, they've started joining the cooking. We usually have some kind of pancakes, and I make a cake called "pajama cake" (which I used to have as a kid for sunday morning breakfast), and usually bran or blueberry muffins, and sometimes the other kids will pitch in with a little something or other, such that everyone (except mom) is involved in preparing breakfast really early on Christmas morning.

it was originally a way to keep the kids in bed until early breakfast (since Dad had to get up and make breakfast, there was a delay between the waking up and the opening of Christmas presents, thus, they weren't up at 4am), but now it's a fun tradition to get Dad and the kids into the kitchen for some cooking fun.

Michael

Yeah - the cooking traditions are great, aren't they? The boys and I do pancakes too, on Sunday morning. And we always make a huge batch so that mom has breakfast nailed down for most of the week. We also do Dad's annual christmas bread bake-a-thon and Mom's annual christmas pizzelli cook-a-thon.