6 New Traditions For 2017

I love new beginnings! I love hearing about people starting a new career, moving to a new city, or planning something new. That's why I love the new year. It's corny but it's so inspiring to have a new vision and write down plans to achieve the goals I’ve set forth. This year I want to build solid foundations for our family, so here are the 6 new traditions I want us to start:

1- Monday Family Meetings

I read The Opposite of Spoiled a few months ago. The author talked about family meetings as a way to build stronger relationships between family members. We’re going to start doing that. We’ll center these meetings around a couple of high/low questions that will reflect on the past week, then give Léo his allowance ($5 for now, 25 cents of which will go in a donation box for an organization of Léo's choosing), and… that’s about it right now. Maybe later we’ll add to that but for now that will suffice.

2- Friday Night Popcorn and Movie

I liked the idea of pizza and movie but we already stick pizzas inside the kids’ lunchboxes once a week. Popcorn may be better. The challenge with this is going to be choosing a different movie weekly, and one that can appeal to both boys. We’ve been watching Home Alone daily for the past 3 weeks -variety is not something the boys relish! But this could become a fun tradition.

Alternatively, we may invite family members for dinners, which is fun for all of us and a good way to unwind after the work week is over.

3- Monthly One-on-ones

I’d like to start monthly dates with both boys -some time alone with each boy to do something fun. And I’d like to start date nights with Joe on a monthly basis as well.

4- Serving 

On top of choosing an organization or a cause to donate to, I want Léo to see service in action so we’ll choose something to do together, like volunteering at the animal shelter, donating food at a food bank, write a card for someone, or letting him choose an act of kindness. We’ll include Jude as much as possible.

5- Birthday Fun

This is going to consist of 2 things: waking the birthday boy up with balloons (or rather putting balloons in their bedroom since they wake up before us) and saying “Yes!” all day. We’ll see how that goes -if there are too many asks or if a request is over our budget, we’ll scale back!

6- Holiday Spirit

We’ve had so much fun this holiday season. A lot of houses in our neighborhood were decked up for Christmas and we spent many evenings driving around and admiring the decorations and lights. I’d like to keep this tradition and others we’ve started this year: baking and decorating cookies with grandma, watching Christmas movies, and picking up toys for kids whose parents don’t have that much money (that could also be included in our acts of service).

I also want to have similar meals and traditions around our major holidays: BBQ for 4^th of July, crepes for Bastille Day, and the inevitable turkey for Thanksgiving.

What about you? Any traditions you’d like to keep or start this year?