We don't have alot yet. For Christmas we always let the kids pick one wrapping paper, then all their stuff is wrapped in that-no name tags. Santa always has his own too, he's so smart! We also always make popcorn and hot chocolate and drive and look at Christmas lights. Halloween we do the dinner (thanks Corri). Birthdays... daddy gets Hayli roses and he always gets donuts and chocolate milk for breakfast. We also do fun homemade birthday cakes. That's all I can think of right now.
Christmas We let the older boys help Santa put the gifts out. After the family looks at what everyone got from Santa we eat breakfast before we open the rest of the gifts.
Halloween Corri makes a spooky meal and we all see if we dare eat it. It is really fun but it definately gross if you let the looks of the meal get to you. We eat things like rats, spiders, brains, eyeballs, stringy things like ligaments, shredded body parts, and so on. Corri usually types up a menu too of what we are eating.
New Years We don't really do anything special here but stay up until midnight and wish everyone HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I don't know if anniversaries is included, but Nate and I have decided to take turns planning something to do on our anniversary every other year. For Halloween we had our first Halloween dinner of gross foods with a bunch of friends. We plan to do that each year now. We're still forming our family traditions for a lot of things. I guess for Christmas it's to travel far in the car :).
Traditions I remember growing up: Christmas - We could open our stockings as soon as we woke up but had to wait for dad & mom to open anything else. We also got to open a present on Christmas Eve that somehow always turned out to be comfortable PJs.
Thanksgiving - Palmagranite salad, pumpkin pie, lemon marange pie, chocolate wonder, and cranberry cake. I love Thanksgiving :)
Birthdays - Pick your meal & cake. For as long as I can remember I've had tuna casserole & refrigerator cake.
Traditions we’ve just started or talked about starting: Annual family letter in July – I don’t usually read everyone’s yearly family letters since we get a ton of them all at Christmas. So we’ve talked about doing ours in July.
Halloween Dinner - We just had our first annual Halloween dinner this past year and we had a blast. We had Monster toes (little smokies wrapped in tortilla shells, baked with ketchup (bloody toenails), chips and dirty diaper dip (refried beans and cheese), and slimy worm sandwiches (sliced hot dogs mixed in ketchup) as the appetizers. For dinner we had mouse dropping casserole (enchilada casserole with black beans) and mummy face pizzas (pepperoni pizzas with string cheese and olives on top) for dinner. Then for dessert we had kitty litter cake and eye balls (crushed Oreo’s with cream cheese covered with white chocolate and a chocolate chip pupil). The drinks were day old bathwater and poison potion (use your imaginations ).
Anniversaries – We just started rotating being in charge of planning these since it’s special for both of us.
Christmas – We’ve yet to have a full Christmas with just our family but so far we’ve got a new Christmas ornament for the tree and a new piece of the Willow Tree nativity set each year.
Weekend family/temple trips – Since we’ve been married we’ve been to 27 states together and 10 temples. We’re going to try to make at least 6 different temple trips to temples we haven’t been to and hit a few new states while we’re at it. I hope this turns into something we expand in the future.
Bert hit on a lot of what I was thinking but I will see if I can add a few more. Christmas - When Bert and I married, we decided that we were going to have to come up with some of our own traditions, since certain ones of our families, santa was wrapped at my house but at his house santa was never wrapped, wouldn't jive. I think we have done a great job of combining and starting new ones. At Christmas, we let the older kids, the ones who no longer are waiting for Santa, say up and play Santa.They get to set the stuff up for the younger onces and even try it all out. That is a lot of fun. Santa isn't wrapped at our house but but out in piles by each persons stocking. We always try to help out one other family, by taking our boys shopping for someone else. This year it was a huge grocery shopping trip and it was a lot of fun.
Thanksgiving to me means family, turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls for Bert, pomagranite salad, cranberry cake and chocolate wonder, everything else is optional.
Birthdays - Grandpa Johnson pretty much set up our birthday tradition. Everyone gets to set up a birthday menu and everyone else cooks it. Each person also gets to pick their own desert. It is not always a cake.
16th birthday at my house is a Barbie cake. It always will be. Since I have no girls, I always threaten to buy Barbies and so for their 16th birthday, they will each get a Barbie. When my boys were born, at Christmas we bought them each a bear with their birth year on it. After they are married, their oldest sons will get their dad's bear and their oldest daughter will get their dad's barbie that he got for his sixteenth birthday (maybe on their sixteenth birthday). I have also kept blessing outfits, one other outfit, and a blanket made for them by grandma for my boys after they marry.
Halloween is my gross meal and that started out because we are poor and I hate Halloween. Each Halloween I would tell my boys if they did not make us take them to the carnival we would take them to McDonald's for dinner plus buy them each a bag of candy that they choose. That kind of changed into me making a meal. We have had some really fun ones. The best one however was the one that Seth, Nate, Cindy, Amanda & Glen spent with us. It was way fun seeing Seth and Nate turn green while my boys munched away like nothing was wrong.
Last, summer vacation- We try every summer to do something fun together as a family. Something that will help build happy memories. While I realize that money is important, when we go on our family vacation, we try to never let that be an issue.
Traditions--well, as I was growing up we always opened all our Christmas (and there wasn't ever too much) on Christmas Eve because Mom always worked on Christmas Day for some reason. I think she volunteered so other families could be together. Our tree was NEVER put up until Christmas Eve day. My mom was so particular that it usually took her all day-to the point that Dad would drill holes and put in new branches so the tree would be perfectly shaped (and you all have wondered where I get my anal-retentiveness!!) Also, there were always silver icicles that were spaced every 1-1/2 and hung over the limb an inch or so (very exact, but very beautiful). Then we would all go out to do the chores and milking while Mom stayed in the house with the littlest kids. When we were just about done my dad would say "I think I hear sleigh bells!" Of course we'd all run to the barn window to look and not see anything bell-wise, but we could see lights through the living room curtains. We hurry with the chores and then rush to the house. We had big double wood doors between the kitchen and the living room that would be closed, but you could see the lights through the slit. We'd hurry to clean up and have dinner-usually clam chowder or some other hot soup-and then get to see the tree for the first time and open our gifts. Dad always handed out the gifts. Now-Mel's and my family's traditions: Christmas, we always gave the kids pajamas on Christmas Eve. When the kids were little we always did the nativity play and the kids got to dress up as shepherds, wise men, etc. My favorite year was the year G'pa and G'ma Stoehr were Mary and Joseph and even Kelly and Linda were in it-angels, of course. I loved to see the kids all dressed up as we read the Christmas story. Christmas to me always means putting out my nativities. I love all the different-looking nativities made our of every material imaginable. Thanksgiving is all about food-for me, cranberry cake. We've added chocolate wonder through the years and I love that, too. We've nixed Dad's favorite lemon fluff because I just can't make it like his mom used to! Thanksgiving to me means blessings, family, blessings, grandkids, blessings and lots of love around the table. Graduations always meant luggage-the most memorable perhaps is Seth's and his face as Maury Perkins gave the valedictorian address and told the world that Seth had taken him rappeling that morning (when he'd been told by us not to!!) Halloween: I always hated Halloween because we were never allowed to go trick-or-treating as kids, but I did like coming up with costumes for my kids over the years--we did come up with some pretty good ones, too. I think every kid was, at one time or another, a bumble bee, a pilgrim, a pirate, a bear, and a super hero. Birthdays meant having your favorite meal and whatever kind of cake you wanted. Fourth of July we never did a whole lot-usually went to Mesquite to the fireworks and then home to do the sparklers and those little black work things on the sidewalk. Traditions-another word for family love.
Not a whole lot of traditions here. We get a new Nutcracker every Christmas that stand on the hearth. We always have differnt Christmas trees...one year was a pyramid of Tomato soup cans that were donated to the food bank when we were done; one year was an upside down pyramid of hanging red tree ornaments (modern art??); one year was a styrofoam tree that we glued shredded green paper to (ugly). This year, we had an actual tree. The boys helped decorate gingerbread men and we watched Polar Express while stringing popcorn for garland. We always have a big Christmas dinner with friends and neighbors. Other than that, we are pretty boring and untraditional. I'll try and improve on that.
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We don't have alot yet. For Christmas we always let the kids pick one wrapping paper, then all their stuff is wrapped in that-no name tags. Santa always has his own too, he's so smart! We also always make popcorn and hot chocolate and drive and look at Christmas lights. Halloween we do the dinner (thanks Corri). Birthdays... daddy gets Hayli roses and he always gets donuts and chocolate milk for breakfast. We also do fun homemade birthday cakes. That's all I can think of right now.
Christmas We let the older boys help Santa put the gifts out. After the family looks at what everyone got from Santa we eat breakfast before we open the rest of the gifts.
Halloween Corri makes a spooky meal and we all see if we dare eat it. It is really fun but it definately gross if you let the looks of the meal get to you. We eat things like rats, spiders, brains, eyeballs, stringy things like ligaments, shredded body parts, and so on. Corri usually types up a menu too of what we are eating.
New Years We don't really do anything special here but stay up until midnight and wish everyone HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I don't know if anniversaries is included, but Nate and I have decided to take turns planning something to do on our anniversary every other year. For Halloween we had our first Halloween dinner of gross foods with a bunch of friends. We plan to do that each year now. We're still forming our family traditions for a lot of things. I guess for Christmas it's to travel far in the car :).
Traditions I remember growing up:
Christmas - We could open our stockings as soon as we woke up but had to wait for dad & mom to open anything else. We also got to open a present on Christmas Eve that somehow always turned out to be comfortable PJs.
Thanksgiving - Palmagranite salad, pumpkin pie, lemon marange pie, chocolate wonder, and cranberry cake. I love Thanksgiving :)
Birthdays - Pick your meal & cake. For as long as I can remember I've had tuna casserole & refrigerator cake.
Traditions we’ve just started or talked about starting:
Annual family letter in July – I don’t usually read everyone’s yearly family letters since we get a ton of them all at Christmas. So we’ve talked about doing ours in July.
Halloween Dinner - We just had our first annual Halloween dinner this past year and we had a blast. We had Monster toes (little smokies wrapped in tortilla shells, baked with ketchup (bloody toenails), chips and dirty diaper dip (refried beans and cheese), and slimy worm sandwiches (sliced hot dogs mixed in ketchup) as the appetizers. For dinner we had mouse dropping casserole (enchilada casserole with black beans) and mummy face pizzas (pepperoni pizzas with string cheese and olives on top) for dinner. Then for dessert we had kitty litter cake and eye balls (crushed Oreo’s with cream cheese covered with white chocolate and a chocolate chip pupil). The drinks were day old bathwater and poison potion (use your imaginations ).
Anniversaries – We just started rotating being in charge of planning these since it’s special for both of us.
Christmas – We’ve yet to have a full Christmas with just our family but so far we’ve got a new Christmas ornament for the tree and a new piece of the Willow Tree nativity set each year.
Weekend family/temple trips – Since we’ve been married we’ve been to 27 states together and 10 temples. We’re going to try to make at least 6 different temple trips to temples we haven’t been to and hit a few new states while we’re at it. I hope this turns into something we expand in the future.
Bert hit on a lot of what I was thinking but I will see if I can add a few more.
Christmas - When Bert and I married, we decided that we were going to have to come up with some of our own traditions, since certain ones of our families, santa was wrapped at my house but at his house santa was never wrapped, wouldn't jive. I think we have done a great job of combining and starting new ones.
At Christmas, we let the older kids, the ones who no longer are waiting for Santa, say up and play Santa.They get to set the stuff up for the younger onces and even try it all out. That is a lot of fun. Santa isn't wrapped at our house but but out in piles by each persons stocking.
We always try to help out one other family, by taking our boys shopping for someone else. This year it was a huge grocery shopping trip and it was a lot of fun.
Thanksgiving to me means family, turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls for Bert, pomagranite salad, cranberry cake and chocolate wonder, everything else is optional.
Birthdays - Grandpa Johnson pretty much set up our birthday tradition. Everyone gets to set up a birthday menu and everyone else cooks it. Each person also gets to pick their own desert. It is not always a cake.
16th birthday at my house is a Barbie cake. It always will be. Since I have no girls, I always threaten to buy Barbies and so for their 16th birthday, they will each get a Barbie. When my boys were born, at Christmas we bought them each a bear with their birth year on it. After they are married, their oldest sons will get their dad's bear and their oldest daughter will get their dad's barbie that he got for his sixteenth birthday (maybe on their sixteenth birthday). I have also kept blessing outfits, one other outfit, and a blanket made for them by grandma for my boys after they marry.
Halloween is my gross meal and that started out because we are poor and I hate Halloween. Each Halloween I would tell my boys if they did not make us take them to the carnival we would take them to McDonald's for dinner plus buy them each a bag of candy that they choose. That kind of changed into me making a meal. We have had some really fun ones. The best one however was the one that Seth, Nate, Cindy, Amanda & Glen spent with us. It was way fun seeing Seth and Nate turn green while my boys munched away like nothing was wrong.
Last, summer vacation- We try every summer to do something fun together as a family. Something that will help build happy memories. While I realize that money is important, when we go on our family vacation, we try to never let that be an issue.
Traditions--well, as I was growing up we always opened all our Christmas (and there wasn't ever too much) on Christmas Eve because Mom always worked on Christmas Day for some reason. I think she volunteered so other families could be together. Our tree was NEVER put up until Christmas Eve day. My mom was so particular that it usually took her all day-to the point that Dad would drill holes and put in new branches so the tree would be perfectly shaped (and you all have wondered where I get my anal-retentiveness!!) Also, there were always silver icicles that were spaced every 1-1/2 and hung over the limb an inch or so (very exact, but very beautiful). Then we would all go out to do the chores and milking while Mom stayed in the house with the littlest kids. When we were just about done my dad would say "I think I hear sleigh bells!" Of course we'd all run to the barn window to look and not see anything bell-wise, but we could see lights through the living room curtains. We hurry with the chores and then rush to the house. We had big double wood doors between the kitchen and the living room that would be closed, but you could see the lights through the slit. We'd hurry to clean up and have dinner-usually clam chowder or some other hot soup-and then get to see the tree for the first time and open our gifts. Dad always handed out the gifts. Now-Mel's and my family's traditions: Christmas, we always gave the kids pajamas on Christmas Eve. When the kids were little we always did the nativity play and the kids got to dress up as shepherds, wise men, etc. My favorite year was the year G'pa and G'ma
Stoehr were Mary and Joseph and even Kelly and Linda were in it-angels, of course. I loved to see the kids all dressed up as we read the Christmas story. Christmas to me always means putting out my nativities. I love all the different-looking nativities made our of every material imaginable. Thanksgiving is all about food-for me, cranberry cake. We've added chocolate wonder through the years and I love that, too. We've nixed Dad's favorite lemon fluff because I just can't make it like his mom used to! Thanksgiving to me means blessings, family, blessings, grandkids, blessings and lots of love around the table. Graduations always meant luggage-the most memorable perhaps is Seth's and his face as Maury Perkins gave the valedictorian address and told the world that Seth had taken him rappeling that morning (when he'd been told by us not to!!) Halloween: I always hated Halloween because we were never allowed to go trick-or-treating as kids, but I did like coming up with costumes for my kids over the years--we did come up with some pretty good ones, too. I think every kid was, at one time or another, a bumble bee, a pilgrim, a pirate, a bear, and a super hero. Birthdays meant having your favorite meal and whatever kind of cake you wanted. Fourth of July we never did a whole lot-usually went to Mesquite to the fireworks and then home to do the sparklers and those little black work things on the sidewalk. Traditions-another word for family love.
Sorry-bad typing--I meant those little black worm things that burned on the sidewalk!
Not a whole lot of traditions here. We get a new Nutcracker every Christmas that stand on the hearth. We always have differnt Christmas trees...one year was a pyramid of Tomato soup cans that were donated to the food bank when we were done; one year was an upside down pyramid of hanging red tree ornaments (modern art??); one year was a styrofoam tree that we glued shredded green paper to (ugly). This year, we had an actual tree. The boys helped decorate gingerbread men and we watched Polar Express while stringing popcorn for garland. We always have a big Christmas dinner with friends and neighbors. Other than that, we are pretty boring and untraditional. I'll try and improve on that.
*Go caroling on Christmas Eve.
*Open one present on Christmas Eve.
*After breakfast we make the rounds to everyone's house to see what they got for Christmas.
*For birthdays, we go out to dinner. The birthday person gets to pick where they want to go.
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