So I'm a big fan of traditions. My own family (my nuclear one, anyway) growing up was kind of all over the place, so I don't recall any regular traditions we had. When I got the sense the Brett was around to stay, I latched onto making some our own traditions. Now that we are married? My mind is going into overdrive!
Lots of our traditions center around holidays, of course. When we put up our Christmas tree, usually shortly after Thanksgiving, we play lot Christmas music and eat one of those yummy Hickory Farms sausage and cheese baskets. On Christmas eve, we eat Chinese food and play games. On Christmas morning, we gorge ourselves on stuffed french toast and open presents together, just the two of us. (Can you tell that all of our traditions center around food?)
I can't wait to start new traditions as a married couple and I'm particularly looking forward to the kid time in our lives when things like that become even more fun! (I'm definitely planning to implement the Mini Van Express on Christmas Eve!)
Earlier this week, Brett and I hit our one month anniversary. Married for one month! It's a bit funny because neither one of us paid much attention to that (it was election day) because honestly, once you've been together for 5 years, a month goes by fast!
To the end of starting a new tradition, I decided we should write letters to one another, to be opened up on our first anniversary, a la time capsule. We each wrote a letter to ourselves one year from now. I am really looking forward to doing this each anniversary! While it first occurred to me that we should do letters at 5 year intervals or so, I realized that we might have some years where that's just not soon enough!
I adore love letters. Brett and I have several boxes of letters, cards, love notes, coloring pages, and other little cutesy things we've given to each other over the course of our relationship. I feel reconnected to that moment, reconnected to Brett, and often, recommitted to our partnership when I read them again. Now that we live together, we write notes a whole lot less, so I want to start this a tradition as a way to make sure, at least once a year- we've got a love letter to read!
What traditions do you have? Do you have different ones as an adult that you had as a child? Did you carry any over?
I like the love letters idea. That is so sweet. Our tradition is we don't celebrate our wedding anniversary, stemming from when neither of us remembered our first one (we were more excited about Nell's 1 month birthday that was 2 days after our 1st anniversary). I remember getting a card from my mom in the mail that day and opening it and saying "Oh! Today is our anniversary!"
ReplyDeleteInstead we celebrate our kissing anniversary. When we do celebrate our wedding anniversary, we make it a family thing and celebrate with Nell. The kissing anniversary is just us as a couple.
Love the letter idea! At Christmas with Mom and Dad we play "the pickle game" Christmas morning. A fake pickle heard hidden in the tree and the winner gets a prize. As kids we got jammies every Christmas Eve, so we always had a gift to open early, it's gotten a bit pricey with grandkids so that tradition needs some updating. We always get an ornament on Thanksgiving so we have it to decorate the Christmas tree. Wow, we are really gift people aren't we? Great post!
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