we always had lunch together as a family on sunday - usually roast. well, i'm an only child & so is my mum, so it was my parents & i and my mum's parents. we alternated between my grandparent's house & ours.
once i started school mum went back to work full time so friday nights were takeaway night. we pretty much always ate dinner together as a family (not so hard when there's only one child!).
i've just started in the habit of not cooking on a friday night and DP and I go to my parent's house most sunday evenings for dinner. sometimes i wish i could have a break but i know how much it means to my mum that the 4 of us have a meal together once a week & plus she's such a good cook!
I take DD to church every Sunday and sometimes DP comes. Doesn't sound like a 'tradition' as such, but we never went before DD was born, so it kinda is.
At Xmas time, the tree goes up the first weekend in December for us. We decorate it together, usually with an orphaned friend or two. I always go to Carols in the Domain and take DD (well, she's only had two, but it's a start!) and this year DP has promised to come with us (now DD is old enough to want him there!). And we go along to our church's kid's Xmas paegent on Xmas Eve.
We have an Easter egg hunt in the backyard at Easter time. Before our DD we used to have friends' kids around, last year it was just for her, but we might extend it next year.
I write DD a special letter to put away for her every birthday.
We have a bedtime ritual where we sit with her beside her bed and talk about her day and what she's going to do tomorrow (after the bath, bb and story routine). We kiss her good night and I have a special saying I whisper in her ear each night.
We have just started having my mum, dad, sister and bro over for dinner every fortnight.
As kids we used to do dinner every sunday night at my grandparents, christmas was a busy day with family in the morning, visiting our fake aunt and uncle before lunch then to my grandparents for a HUGE family lunch which usually went on until dinner so we could eat left overs!
Easter we used to go away every year with mums side of the family
but we are starting our own things as the kids get older!
Church on Sunday used to be a tradition for DS and me... have to pluck up the courage to go back this week. And after this week find another Church (pessimistic me!).
WRT the vege Sunday Dinner option, I like quorn fillets cooked in vegetable stock for about 35 minutes. Not roast meat, I know, but tastes really nice and even DH and DS, who are devoted Meaties, love it when we don't have meat in.
we have a "street" tradition where almost all of us get together on Grand Final (afl) day at our best mans place for bbq and to watch the game. it's a fantastic day, and i wouldn't miss it for the world! my bro and sil now stay at our place the night before and night of, so that they can join us too!!
Christmas lunch always has, and always will be, with my brother and with our intellectually disabled aunt. we make a huge effort to stick to this for her sake. if our parents show, so be it - but we wouldn't NOT have Christmas together for Col's sake
We have prayers before bed together and we also do family holidays with our closest friends every year.
One thing that is my biggest tradition is Thanksgiving. Its the American in me, but its also something else, getting together with our extended family (friends mostly) and having a huge dinner and then the biggest thing for us is in our dinner conversation we talk about something we are thankful for in the previous year and why. So we had a Thanksgiving dinner 2 weeks after Jovie was born and I had a lot to be thankful for.
i just remembered one tradition that i wish i could have back. when i moved away from home to go to uni, my Grandad used to ring me at uni every Sunday evening, five o'clock on the dot. i'd buy the sunday paper and read it waiting for him to call, he'd call, we'd talk about the footy, the news from the week, how cold it was up in Canberra (or hot - but not so often!). since he passed away, i haven't been able to buy a Sunday paper. i really miss those phone calls
It is only DH and me but we make sure we eat dinner at the table every night. We have fish and chips night once a month as a treat. Every year starting from last year (when we moved back to the UK from Oz) we are going to have a bonfire in our garden for Winter Solstice with mulled wine and roast chestnuts etc. We did it last year and it was great. Another tradition I have done for a couple of years is make my own fruit mince with dried fruit and brandy and make up a big cake and hundreds of little mince pies. I like the idea of the lady's tea party with the cake mentioned earlier and might do that this year! The fruit is already soaking... yum
We don't have many traditions yet, mainly because we're still a 'new' family and haven't had much chance to establish proper traditions, but partly because DH is the most unsentimental person I've ever met and doesn't 'believe' in making a big deal of things like holidays, anniversaries, birthdays, etc.
One tradition that I am adamant about is a huge spread and hot roast lunch for Christmas Day. As a child, Christmas was mainly spent at my dad's parents' house for the holidays, and nanna is quite traditional so Christmas Day always involved huge breakfast of bacon and eggs (and the rest) and opening presents, then hot roast meat, cold ham and seafood, salads and roast vegies, and everything else for lunch, and then dinner was just 'go stick your head in the fridge, plenty of leftovers!'
Nanna has since moved another four hours further away from us though to be closer to my aunt and her kids (the youngest was born when I was 13 so they're still little and she likes spending lots of time with them), so for the last few years Christmas at my parents' has been an exercise in disappointment for me, anyway - Mum just bakes some of those frozen calamari and fish fillets, buys some fresh prawns and makes a salad, then they sit in front of the TV and don't speak unless spoken to (she complains that it's just too hot to bother, which is true, but come on, it's CHRISTMAS!!).
So now that DH's parents aren't around anymore, and we don't have to split the day between two houses, I have taken it upon myself to be Christmas Fairy and insist on doing the big roast with all the trimmings. It forces everyone to sit at the table and celebrate rather than treat it like any other day, but with presents.
Birthdays are another one I like making a big deal over - DH absolutely hates even the barest acknowledgment of his (although he is not at all averse to accepting gifts!), but I still insist on baking him his favourite cake (I like making from scratch but he likes those packet ones, so I make him one and then add a twist like cutting it in half and spreading extra icing or whipped cream on the bottom layer before sandwiching it all together) and decorating it for him. For DD's first birthday we had a party at the Marina with our families there, and I would love to continue doing that - I always had parties as a kid and thoroughly enjoyed it (although I never liked fairy bread and ****tail franks, even back then!), so I would like to continue that with the kids.
We don't do much for my birthday, as DH and I don't drink and he doesn't bake, so we usually go to my parents' for dinner and they do the cake thing for me
We have two anniversaries - one is the day we officially became a couple, and our wedding anniversary, so we 'celebrate' both. On our 'dating' anniversary, in October, we usually buy each other small gifts and wish each other a happy anniversary, and on our wedding anniversary I put on my wedding dress and we go out to dinner (the one and only day of the year he ever takes me out for dinner, but hey, it's a novelty that way!).
As far as day-to-day traditions go, the only one I really stick to is my Sunday tradition - I go to the corner store and get the three Sunday papers (Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne) and then spend the rest of the day sifting through them at my leisure, pausing for housework, playing with DD and doing other things that need attention. It literally takes me all day to get through them because of the stop-start nature, but I enjoy it.
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