How many times do you have to do something before it becomes an official tradition? I LOVE TRADITIONS! If you don't love traditions, seriously, something is wrong (you've probably been doing them wrong, or not at all)! Most traditions seem to happen around the holidays. Everybody loves Christmas and many people have different traditions around that time. On Christmas Eve my family has two main traditions. With my parents, we take all of our old Christmas cards that have been sent to us and cut out the pictures, gluing them to large sheets of construction paper for placemats to eat our traditional quiche (made by my dad) and the next day's Christmas feast with ham, scalloped potatoes, and strawberry pretzel salad. After we finish Christmas Eve dinner with my parents, we go spend a few hours with my husband's side of the family. Second dinner at Great Grandma's house with lots of cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. I love that too! I also love second dinner. Good food=good tradition :) We play a few games, open presents, chat. There are a pretty good number of us packed into a little farm house nestled in the snow. Christmas is wonderful. What a warm little picture in my mind, but it's July right now. So:
The Fourth of July is just as exciting to me as Christmas! A lot of people think I'm weird, because a lot of people don't do anything big for the fourth. That is okay, but I like my Fourth of July big! Growing up in Vancouver, WA the firework show used to be "The biggest West of the Mississippi!" But funding has gone down and the firework show has dwindled a little, but it's still worth going!!! I am going to speak in past tense as I talk about this because my family now all lives in the Idaho/Utah area. Everybody came from all around the Portland, OR/Vancouver metropolitan area to watch. We would put out blankets in the Fort Vancouver Field on Officer's Row. There would be thousands and thousands of people. We always went early in the afternoon to stake out a spot. My parents were not die hards (some would think we were). We never got shade because they were not willing to go at 9 am. We had friends who did. The atmosphere was full of the grand stand live music bands, craft booths, greasy, yummy fair food (which we never got-too expensive. We brought in a picnic), sky divers with brightly colored parachutes, airplanes writing messages in the air (note: I think that would be so romantic. My husband should do that for me someday), card games, brownies, friends and family. You can not get close parking. We just always planned on lugging a bunch of stuff in at least a mile and packing it all out (chairs, blankets, coolers, umbrellas, coats for night time, etc.).
SIDE NOTE FOR MEMORY LANE: One year my parents bought this really long piece of pvc pipe and spray painted it red, white, and blue. We stuck it in the ground so our friends and family could find us as they came later in the evening. I have such a vivid memory of when the firework show was over. The mass of people were all moving in one direction. We children are waiting for our parents to pack everything up before we begin our journey out. It's like standing still in a river with a current. A tall guy walks by and just grasps the pole and takes it with him. It's gone. I quickly bring it to my dad's attention. My brothers and I are thinking, "Go get it back, Dad!" My dad's words to us are, "Now you see how children can be kidnapped," and he goes back to packing. Oh. Yep. I guess that's true. Now I'm a little on edge. Never thought of that before. But I worry that it hurt my mom's feelings that the pole is gone till she says, "Oh well. I'm kind of glad we don't have to worry about packing that thing out." Ok. Good. I'm at piece with the pole again, but still kind of nervous. I feel like gripping my parents' coat tails so no one can take me or my brothers.
BACK TO THE PURPOSE OF THE ARTICLE: So...traditions, I like them...yes. Now we all live in the Idaho area. We hear Idaho Falls has a similar event. So we must try it out and see if we can continue on our tradition. I look forward to Monday!
"Only two traditions??" you say. Well, I started a new one at Easter. We eat hummus on pita bread with tabouli and falafuls on Easter Eve. It's probably not exactly what they ate in bible days, who knows. But we like it and it feels middle eastern to us, so it works. I even created a middle eastern station on Pandora to listen to while we ate.
Birthdays we eat out and get together with the family...
...................I think we need more traditions. I will keep working on that. For me, a tradition has to be meaningful, memorable, and not an over the top amount of work. But once it's a tradition, you HAVE to do it! You can not slack off. That's not fun!
Oh! I know another one! Every 24th of July we gather with Jaron's family to attend the St. Anthony Pioneer day's parade. The floats are amazing!!! Especially for a tiny town like St. Anthony, ID. We usually barbecue after that. I really look forward to that event also. So we do have more than two! I KNEW IT!
Traditions are a kind of glue that can hold a family together and bring us happiness and purpose through our Earthy Journey. We will carry memories with us forever. Making them happen can take sacrifice, time, and effort, but they are AWLAYS worth it!
Many months later...I remembered another tradition I have that I want to record. In place of gifts, I take my nieces and nephews for a treat for their birthday. They are all young, but I hope someday they will know their Aunt Brooke loved and cared about them. I hope my small influence will be for good. This idea came to me when my first niece Morgin was born. Her birth was the closest I had ever been to motherhood. Her birthday is just a few days after Christmas. When she turned 3 I was boggled about what to get her. So I did this instead. Her 4th birthday I gave her a gift (actually easier once I got my own kids!) but for her 5th birthday when I asked her what she wanted, she told me she wanted to go out together for a treat again. It's difficult to make the time for it. And with time, fuel, the cost of the treat for the birthday child, myself and now my children, it's more than I would probably spend on a gift, but I just think you can't put a price on taking time for precious loved ones.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Things Are Tight
Has money ever been tight at your house? It has been, IS as ours right now. Or is it? I have wished for more money many times in my life. "If I had more money I would completely decorate my house, put my kids in more extra-curriculars, cook organic meals, maintain vehicles according to manufacturer's recommendations, dress with more style, take memorable family vacations, have more consistent date nights with my husband, never let my highlighted hair show the roots growing out, complete the landscape in my yard, lets see...what else, I know there's more. Oh, I know, have more kids, keep my house cleaner because I would have time since I wouldn't have to work, be more organized since I could afford more organizing units in my house, print anything I wanted in full color, stay up to date on scrapbooks because I could print off all of my digital albums, always have a house full of music since I could afford to buy what I wanted from i tunes, be more well read from all the books downloaded to my Kindle. Okay, maybe I should stop there. Perhaps I should have stopped earlier, now I feel like I'm murmuring.
The summer I left before college my parents took us on a family vacation to San Diego. This wasn't the first time. PAUSE:
Tribute to my dad. My dad is a GIS Specialist and whenever he can, he tries to attend the annual GIS conference held in San Diego every July. Dad would take the allotted money his job budgeted in for him to fly, eat, and lodge in a nice hotel, and stretched it as far as he could to take his family along. This meant driving for two days straight with three whiny kids in cars that would overheat in the California desert where he would walk to the nearest aquifer to scoop water to dump in the engine. It meant dealing with all kinds of disruptions to personal peace and enjoyment coming from the back seat such as fighting, puking, complaining, nagging for station changes, and loud and obnoxious games. All to offer us a dream come true of warm beaches, DisneyLand, Sea World, San Diego Zoo, and memories that will last a life time.
RESUME: The summer of 1999 (I had just graduated high school) my brothers and I got a new experience with our family San Diego trip. My dad walked us across the boarder into Tijuana, Mexico. This was my first experience with poverty of this extremity. The smell, putrid. The filth, everywhere. The pieces of tin leaned together to make houses. Women and babies slunched against buildings and roadsides. I woke up. Never in my life had I been conscientiously thankful for a bed and clean sheets, but I now was. I'd never been hungry because food is just plain not available to me. I'd never gotten sick from drinking the water that comes from my sink....I HAD SINKS! A new realization for me: everybody doesn't have indoor plumbing?
I haven't been to another place like that in my life since, but I have read about hunger and poverty. I've seen it in the media and I know first hand that it exists. So maybe it's time for me to re-evaluate what I would do if I had more money. And even if we never do win the lottery, I believe its the intention of my heart that matters. So tonight I acknowledge that I live in great prosperity. I have a bed, a home, food, computers with internet, cars, carpet, plumbing, windows that easily open and close, PAUSE:
Before we built our house we lived in a little 30 year old single wide mobile home. Every summer, we would have to take out all the winter windows and exchange them for screens so we could open windows in the summer. It was a huge pain. Our little poopy green trailer also had constant mice problems, no dryer heat vent outlet so the entire house would steam up when we ran the dryer (very frustrating in the hot summer), absolutely not storage space, no dishwasher, no oven (baked EVERYTHING in a counter top roaster including Savannah's first birthday cake, takes twice as long, everyone came for the celebration, cake still not done baking. Hi.). It all was but a moment and makes me much more thankful for my home now.
RESUME: means to add income to our household from home, medicines, grass, trees, garbage service. This is a list that SHOULD go on and on. So let me keep going, a deep freezer, a kitchen table, heat, more shoes than I can count in my head, 4 or 5 warm winter coats, cell phone, kindle, i pods, first aide products, clean water, tvs, wii, lots of food on storage shelves, full refrigerator, piano, concrete around house, garden shed, and many more things, but it is 11:30 pm and my eyes are beginning to droop, so I need to get to bed.
I didn't even mention the things I'm grateful for that truly have meaning like my family, religion, free country. But the next time I think about "being tight," I will also think that some people in the world live with so much less and are happy.
The summer I left before college my parents took us on a family vacation to San Diego. This wasn't the first time. PAUSE:
Tribute to my dad. My dad is a GIS Specialist and whenever he can, he tries to attend the annual GIS conference held in San Diego every July. Dad would take the allotted money his job budgeted in for him to fly, eat, and lodge in a nice hotel, and stretched it as far as he could to take his family along. This meant driving for two days straight with three whiny kids in cars that would overheat in the California desert where he would walk to the nearest aquifer to scoop water to dump in the engine. It meant dealing with all kinds of disruptions to personal peace and enjoyment coming from the back seat such as fighting, puking, complaining, nagging for station changes, and loud and obnoxious games. All to offer us a dream come true of warm beaches, DisneyLand, Sea World, San Diego Zoo, and memories that will last a life time.
RESUME: The summer of 1999 (I had just graduated high school) my brothers and I got a new experience with our family San Diego trip. My dad walked us across the boarder into Tijuana, Mexico. This was my first experience with poverty of this extremity. The smell, putrid. The filth, everywhere. The pieces of tin leaned together to make houses. Women and babies slunched against buildings and roadsides. I woke up. Never in my life had I been conscientiously thankful for a bed and clean sheets, but I now was. I'd never been hungry because food is just plain not available to me. I'd never gotten sick from drinking the water that comes from my sink....I HAD SINKS! A new realization for me: everybody doesn't have indoor plumbing?
I haven't been to another place like that in my life since, but I have read about hunger and poverty. I've seen it in the media and I know first hand that it exists. So maybe it's time for me to re-evaluate what I would do if I had more money. And even if we never do win the lottery, I believe its the intention of my heart that matters. So tonight I acknowledge that I live in great prosperity. I have a bed, a home, food, computers with internet, cars, carpet, plumbing, windows that easily open and close, PAUSE:
Before we built our house we lived in a little 30 year old single wide mobile home. Every summer, we would have to take out all the winter windows and exchange them for screens so we could open windows in the summer. It was a huge pain. Our little poopy green trailer also had constant mice problems, no dryer heat vent outlet so the entire house would steam up when we ran the dryer (very frustrating in the hot summer), absolutely not storage space, no dishwasher, no oven (baked EVERYTHING in a counter top roaster including Savannah's first birthday cake, takes twice as long, everyone came for the celebration, cake still not done baking. Hi.). It all was but a moment and makes me much more thankful for my home now.
RESUME: means to add income to our household from home, medicines, grass, trees, garbage service. This is a list that SHOULD go on and on. So let me keep going, a deep freezer, a kitchen table, heat, more shoes than I can count in my head, 4 or 5 warm winter coats, cell phone, kindle, i pods, first aide products, clean water, tvs, wii, lots of food on storage shelves, full refrigerator, piano, concrete around house, garden shed, and many more things, but it is 11:30 pm and my eyes are beginning to droop, so I need to get to bed.
I didn't even mention the things I'm grateful for that truly have meaning like my family, religion, free country. But the next time I think about "being tight," I will also think that some people in the world live with so much less and are happy.
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