Dune Buggying & Christmas Trees
How traditions shape us and clarify our family culture
I love family traditions…
We have many great family traditions, like our 100-year tradition (no joke) of our entire family going to Grand Bend for the July 1st long weekend. Or like going and hunting for and cutting down a real Christmas tree Griswold style.
As much as my kids roll their eyes at our traditions, they also love them because,
Our traditions solidify our family culture.
Our traditions clarify who we are as a family.
Our traditions highlight what is truly important to us.
Our traditions highlight that - family is everything.
One of our best traditions happens on Labour Day Weekend at the end of every summer.
As the long-weekend comes to a close, we all sit down together.
This year we sat around our backyard fire pit, no phones, no distractions.
We go around and share a favourite memory from the summer. The memory can be something small or major event. After the first memory, we share another. And another. We continue to go around until no one can think of a single additional detail to share.
We had a spectacular summer this year with both boys doing summer programs abroad, so the sharing went round after round after round.
A true highlight that came up was when the four of us went dune-buggying in the Agafay Desert in Morocco. The boys now being 17 years old were our drivers - Candace with Andrew and me with Alexander. They took their revenge on us from a year of drivers ed and graduated licensing. This was an opportunity for them to drive like maniacs and they both loved it!
Traditions can be major like the weekend in Grand Bend with the entire family. Traditions can also be small things like when we a guest at our house for a meal for the first time, we have them take a head lamp and a Sharpie marker, go under under our dining room table and sign the underside!
Most of our traditions that we have adopted have come from others sharing their family traditions and us adopting them too!
I would love it if you would share some of your favourite traditions down in the comments!
To your Bigger Things!
Brad 💕👊
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