Traditions

Confession: After Thanksgiving, I was freaking out about our family not following through with tradition. With everyone growing up and going different ways, I felt as though we let that win. A Thanksgiving tradition for our family is to sing the song "Por estos favores," eat like crazy, go around and share one thing that we're thankful for, and play hard. We had every intention of doing it all, but scheduling was not on our side. All we did was sing the song and eat like crazy. I left feeling incomplete.

Then I started thinking, what are our Christmas traditions? Thinking of our "OK" Thanksgiving, I kind of started "freaking out" (for lack of better terms) because I couldn't think of any and how in the world would we keep the traditions alive if we don't even know what they are?

WELL - NOT TO WORRY.

I have figured out that traditions aren't necessarily intentional. You don't sit there and MAKE THEM (I mean, you can, but I find that I get too intense if I do that). THEY just happen. And I was trying to hard to make something so meaningful when it was there all along. I let it GO! :o)

Our traditions:

1. Christmas play at my parents church! There are always super funny stories to go along once it's all said and done.
2. TAMALES! My grandmother and some of her daughters (including my mom) get together and make the best tamales in the entire world! I'm afraid of this one because I've tried helping and I haven't been successful yet.
3. Christmas Light Tours! My family does this EVERY year. And since my grampa's been gone, I make it a point to bring my gramma. We go around to different neighborhoods and check out their decked out houses. Last night I took my fam to the Heights. My dad treated us to dinner at Tim's favorite place - Chicago's.
4. Christmas Talent show!When we're together on the 24th we all take turns showing off our talent. It all gets recorded!! AH! :)
5. Dressing Up! We make it a point to look super fly on Christmas Eve and go crazy with picture taking.