New Traditions

I am a sucker for traditons. If nothing else, my kids should have a plethera of "we used to do..." or "remember when we..." This has been a year of transition for us. We are still working out what traditions are important irregardless of who is at home or will be participting vs. those that we MUST do together as a family. One thing we normally do as a part of our advent study is to put walnuts/pebbles into a jar. As I mentioned in a previous post, not much of that has been done this year. The purpose of this excercise is to discover what the walnuts (the most important things) are for each person. We discovered early on that if we put the walnuts in first, the pebbles (smaller less significant things) will always fit. It is a good focus on our priorities. It also helps us to stay focused on things each of us deem important during this holiday season. A few weeks ago my dad mentioned that a new ice stating rink had opened up downtown. I went to the website and gathered information. We decided to go on a Tuesday because 1)Owen doesn't have gym on Tuesdays and 2) it is buy one get one free night. Once we got into the car, I informed them that this was a "no whine, no fuss" event. I have to say, even the kids agreed, we had a glorious time. We haven't done something like that in a long, long time. We were way past due. The kids even humored me and let me take all kinds of pictures. We skated, went and ate dinner, then skated some more. I think it has definitely made the "to do again" list. We had ten million things we could have been doing - yet I know it was a walnut, even without doing the visual exercise!