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 4th 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?
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