Holidays, Celebrations and Traditions

My class has been looking at holidays around the world-like a lot of classrooms, but this year we want to look deeper.  What is a holiday, celebration, and tradition?  It goes beyond the marked day that everyone celebrates-it's about what your family does!  Growing up we have developed/created a lot of traditions during our celebrations and these are things I will pass on to my own children.  Birthdays were always a huge deal!  We decorated the house and had a birthday sign that has managed to make it through the years (Mark and I have started one at our house).  Now that we are married things have had to change because we embrace our new family's traditions.  It's fun to hear how everyone celebrates and carries on traditions.  It is also interesting to me to find new ways to incorporate old traditions to fit our new family-things have to change a little through the years to make it meaningful for our children.  It will be interesting to see how our holidays, celebrations and traditions evolve through the years.
This year we had Thanksgiving with my family and decided to have it at the lake since this is a place that will be creating a lot of our memories.  There is something about being down there that really brings peace to me.  I don't think about my daily things at home (like my obsession to clean) and I have multiple hands to help (I know there are only a handful of people who can truly understand how hard having little ones this close can be).  We also all have our own space, but yet are all together as an extended family.

The weather was AMAZING.  I was giving my mom a hard time for her determination to buy outdoor toys-I assumed they would just play with what we had, but I was so wrong.  They all played on the deck or in the garage with the doors open.  We went for walks everyday (which were great until I remembered I was pregnant and started having little contractions).  The kids were all playing together and having so much fun-so were the adults!

Our family tradition is turkey three way.  Yep, my parents cook three turkeys!  We had a turducken, a smoked turkey and a baked turkey-they were all well over 15 ILBS.

My two men:)

Avery loved just being pushed around

The scooter was a big hit!

Greta is on the move everywhere-they heard a noise coming from the dining room and found her in my parent's bowl (from Italy).  These pictures were pretty cute.

In order to keep our Italian memories alive-the night before we made homemade pizza dough from Mario Batali! When the dough is ready we broke them into individual pizzas and put them right on the grill.  When they are crisp we added what ever topping we wanted and put them back on the grill to melt the cheese.  YUM the memories came back to me and the kids.

One finished product

I also stopped in to see my best friend Robyn who has moved to Mississippi.  Her youngest son is only a month older than Avery.  They warmed up fast and we had fun with our short but meaningful visit.

I love sharing about our family, but love to hear about others as well.  My hope is to always remember why we are celebrating holidays and have my children know what the true meaning is behind them.  It's good to take time and look at what a holiday, celebration, and traditions means and to know how we can help others or remember it's about being with those we love!  Christmas is coming up next!