Thursday, February 5, 2009

Traditions...and ugly outfits

A few random photos:
The girls snowmobiling. Syd's mad because she wants to go alone

Callie and Abby

Callie 2 months old

One of my new goals for this year is to try and create a few family traditions. I feel like sometimes my life can be like the movie "Groundhog's Day." The same thing over and over again. Not bad necessarily, but can be a little hum-drum. I love looking forward to things like: BYU Football, Christmas time, Spring time when the kids can ride their bikes again, 4th of July with my extended family; Labor-Day weekend with Sterling's family; the Olympics, going to Disneyland, etc. These things are pretty big events, but I have been thinking about trying to add smaller things to look forward to, more often and repetitively. Our girls just love family night. They can't wait till Monday and usually we try to do something fun each week. I know they would love to start some new traditions similar to things we do at family night. I was hoping to add something once a week or once a month, to look forward too. Here are somethings I have heard of people doing:

Family movie night: With theme and all. The mom even tries to make dinner or snacks coordinating with the movie.
Friday pizza night
Saturday pancake breakfast
Neighborhood parties once a month
Color theme day once a week
Grandparents FHE once a month

Anyway, sometimes I feel like my brain has not recovered from having four kids, so I feel like it is hard to be creative and come up with new ideas. I don't mean to steal something from you but if you have any ideas you would like to share, or found something that has worked for you let me know. I think traditions are fun and are a great way to bring a family together. I want to start doing this more while my kids are young and get into this fun habit. I don't want to do something that takes a lot of work , work being the key word, because I know I won't keep it up. Thanks in advance for sharing!!

So completely off this subject, I had to laugh yesterday as I watched and listened to my two year old whine and complain and hound me about her outfit that was drying. She paced back and forth in front of the dryer asking me over and over when it was going to be done. She, of course was so distressed by not being able to wear her favorite outfit while it was being cleaned that they only thing she could do was change her clothes about 10-12 times while waiting. I was starting to lose my patience with her when this memory popped into my head. My Mom has reminded me of this several several times. She thinks it is so funny and loves to talk about it all the time. When I was about 5 her sister sent a box of girl clothes (her sister only had one girl and 8 boys!) to my mom. Inside this box was the ugliest shirt she had seen. Before she could get ride of it I found it and it immediately became my favorite. I can still remember this shirt. It was mostly white with red piping and a beautiful rainbow on the front (very 70's) I had to wear it all the time. I don't blame myself I looked dang good in it! It set off my hair. Well I would do the same thing. Wait by the dryer and drive my mom crazy while it dried.
While my two year old waited for her clothes to dry I tryed my best to convince her to put on this other outfit. The outfit I tempted her with is blue with flowers and birds on it. It is very comfortable and easy to get on and off. I love the way Tess looks in it. It is so cute and chic. But alas I have only seen her in it once. She has refused to wear since. Even though she looks so cute in it. Instead it this ugly outfit I mistakenly bought for her that she whines for. Again, I was reminded of an incident from my childhood. I was about 5 again and my Mom was trying to get me to wear this incredibly ugly red dress. It was frilly and lacy and way to red. I looked stupid in it! How could my mom want me to wear such a thing. There was no way that was going to happen. Of course I won. And of course my two year won. I guess what goes around comes around. (I was right about the red dress though, Tess on the other had just does't have good taste :)

4 comments:

ang said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ang said...

we do family movie night every friday and D seriously loves it. we write it on the calendar and he looks forward to it all week. we don't do anything fancy though...just bust out the hot-air popcorn popper and have some "special" drinks (juice?). he loves it.

malinda said...

Thanks ang! I think that is great. Friday night growing up was always pizza night at our house and if we didn't have a football game to go to we usually rented a movie too. I loved it.

Heather Anderson said...

I love your post. I think it is the simple things that kids remember. Sometimes I will go all out and plan some BIG thing and at the end of the day I always ask my kids what their fav part of the day was... and it is some little thing that was no big deal most the time. We totally do the Sat pancakes cuz Matt works that morning and it just makes the morning a little slower which is good... and we do Fun Fridays and that is just letting the kids pick one (small) thing to do Firday after school (if everyone ad a good week) like rent a movie, get ice cream or go to Grandma's to play video games. And every Sunday we bake a dessert like cookies together. Simple and fun traditions my kids love:) Let me know what you come up with I am always looking for good ideas. I remember FHE at your house was always awesome when we were younger! We made tye dye tshirts once and I thought that was great:)