Traditions

Tonight I attend the Progressive Dinner for our Relief Society. What a wonderful evening. It may be because I needed a moment away from craft fair preparation, work, and sick kids or just the fact that I have made some wonderful friends in our ward. Thanks ladies for a great evening and thanks Steph for the wonderful parting gift!! I'm ready to go shopping at your secret jewelry hang out any time you are!! =D
At the end of the dinner a lady in our ward briefly spoke about traditions and how families now more then ever need traditions. While she was sharing her traditions with her family I started thinking about traditions that my family had when we were kids. Funny enough, the other night when I was finishing up the Christmas decorations and listening to the radio there is a station here in Vegas that is now playing 24/7 Christmas music. Each night the jockey, Dilylia will have callers call in and tell her what they are thankful for this holiday season and then she will find a song to match their story. I am finding myself listening to her each night before I go to bed because I love to hear these stories that people want to share. There was one caller the other night that made me cry. She was explaining how her father was so adamant on how the tree was decorated. They didn't have a fancy tree, all the ornaments were mix match and they had the big light bulbs on the tree and the silver tensil that they were only allowed to put one strand on at a time. As I was listening to her story it was almost like my mom was telling the same story. This was exactly how it was in our home growing up. I truly believe that families should have traditions that can be passed from generation to generation. I believe that the Lord speaks to us in different ways, and after hearing the story of the Christmas tree on the radio and the talk given tonight, there is something hear that I am supposed to know about traditions. I thought it would be fun to post some funny traditions that we had as kids;
** Baking and more baking and more baking and more baking. We were always in the kitchen helping my mom cook something. Frosting sugar cookies. How I hated this job because there was so many. As I got older, I talked the neighborhood kids in to helping us. To this day, I hate frosting sugar cookies.
**Decorating the tree. I used to love hanging the tinsel and we were only allowed one strand at a time. I used to love opening the ornaments and finding the fun ones to hang on the tree. My mom kept every ornament that me and my sister ever made in school.
**I used to love Christmas Eve, probably more then Christmas. Back then at 6:00 o'clock the radio stations would start playing only Christmas songs. I remember waiting all day long for the Christmas song to come on. We would start getting ready to go visit all our family friends in the neighborhood and then everyone would come back to our house for a buffet of food my mom prepared every year.
**There was a radio station behind our home and they had three radio towers. Each of them had a red light on the top and I remember my parents telling us that it was Rudolph's nose.
**We opened up pj's every year on Christmas Eve.
** Christmas Eve, my sister and I would always sleep together in my room. We would lay there seeing if we could hear Santa coming.
** Christmas morning we weren't allowed to go to the front room without our parents. We had to wake them up and then we would cuddle up in our blankets next to the heater vent while my mom and dad would go and turn on all the lights and make sure that Santa did in fact come. =D
**Christmas day we would always visit Grandma and Grandpa's house. It was easy to do when they only lived 5 minutes from each other. I loved going to Grandma and Grandpa's house at Christmas time. It was always something different about that day then any other day.

This is just a few traditions that I thought about tonight. I am so thankful for my parents making traditions that I have been able to pass to my children as they will get older. I hope I can build traditions for my children to share as they get older.