Traditions...Traditions!

My friend Becca is hosting her first linky party over at Home Is Where My Story Begins.  The theme is "Home and Family".  I've been wracking my brain about what to write since I've had no time for projects this week, but then it hit me: Family Traditions.

I'm sure we all have a ton of traditions surrounding Christmas, but that's another blog post. I'm hoping you'll join me today in talking about traditions you enjoy throughout the rest of the year.

The first family tradition of ours that comes to mind is the one that happens the most often: Family Movie Night. 

We have it every week.  I will admit that it originally started out as a way for me to not have to cook dinner and to corral the kids after a long weekend, but it's become a fun and much-anticipated event every week.  We take turns picking the movie and dinner (though it's most often pizza; I still don't want to cook!).  The kids generally pick movies we've already seen, but that's OK.  It gives my brain a chance to relax (and I admit it, I love the Barbie movies almost as much as they do).

Something that goes along with movie night is our pizza plates.  When I was pregnant with Thing 2, I had friends and family (including Thing 1) decorate some salad/dessert plates from a local ceramic shop.  When Thing 2 was old enough, she also decorated a plate.  Now we use them every time we have pizza.  Come to think of it, this is a tradition I brought from my own childhood.

Birthdays, of course, come with their own traditions. In our family, the birthday person picks the meals for the day (and we go out to eat for dinner). We also have a birthday hat that the birthday person is supposed to wear (this is a tradition that may not last much longer since I seem to be the only one who likes it).

Our favorite birthday tradition, though, is waking up the birthday person and surprising them with a donut adorned with a candle.  Well...we're supposed to be waking them up and surprising them.  The way it works now: the girls begin discussing what kind of donut they'll get the night before.  Then they wake up early and wait impatiently in bed for us to wake up.  Eventually, they'll send the sibling in to see when we're coming and, when we finally make it in, they pretend to sleep.  We sing Happy Birthday to "wake them up" and all share the donut.  It's a very nice way to start the day.

When Thing 1 started Kindergarten, I worried that she would miss us (because I knew I would be missing her), so I got her a nice charm bracelet and one charm.  I told her that she could use it to remember us if she got sad or lonely.  Each September, we add a new charm to the bracelet.  I look forward to starting this tradition withThing 2 this year.

Finally, Thing 2 and I did something this St. Patrick's day that I hope will turn into a new tradition: green food!  On a whim this year, we put green food coloring in everything we could think and giggled the whole time.  Just imagine what we could do next year with a little planning!

(OK, maybe we won't be making this for a while...)

What about you? What traditions do you hold dear?  Have your traditions changed as your family has grown?

I'm linking this post up to: