The Super Best Egg Hunter in the Land

Flannery won the egg hunt by finding the most eggs during our family egg hunt with Robi's dad's side of the family.  She was so proud of herself!  She found 52 eggs, whew!

Flanna's cute cousins

running through sprinklers before the egg hunt

hunting in the back yard at Flanna's great grandmother Nana's house

cousins with their baskets

What have you accomplished lately that brings you pride?

Egg Decorating at the Beach

Even though we were at the beach, we still wanted to give the girls a chance to keep the Easter tradition of egg dyeing alive.  My parents' house at the beach is just too beautiful to take a chance at spilling egg dye inside it, so we let the kiddos dye eggs in the garage during spring break.  Doesn't it seem so "hollywood" to dye eggs with palm trees in the background?

What Easter tradition do you try to keep?

Share and Create Family Traditions

My husband and I have created a tradition that we now cannot live without.   I guess it's really more of a "couple tradition" than a family tradition, but anyway.   Each year, our Christmas present to one another is a New Year's Eve trip to Athens.  We get a fancy hotel room, leave Flanna with a sitter (this year she spend the night with a friend, even better!), eat a nice dinner out, and ring in the new year downtown with friends.

It's sublime.  And I feel refreshed even just talking about it.

It's so nice to have time together just as a couple, and to get to feel young and fun out on the town now and then!  I think little breaks from the routine of the day-to-day are essential for a good marriage, and I try to plan little excursions and date nights as often as I can.

Here are some of our cute friends who met up with us.  And, by the way, in my defense, there is no graceful way to hold a NYE party favor for a photo.  It always looks silly, no matter what.

What "couple traditions" do you and your partner enjoy?  Some of my facebook friends have a "Wednesday night funny movie night" each week, which I think sounds so great.  

Share and Create Family Traditions

Robi's grandfather "Pop" was a train mechanic for most of his adult life, so we've tried to instill in Flannery a love for trains passed down through the generations.  Here she is, playing with our train at the foot of our Christmas tree.  This remote control train set (it's Geotrax brand) has been so wonderful, because it's rather sturdy,  the track is easy to put together, the train can go forward or backward, it's easy to control, and the batteries seem to last forever in the train and controller.  I wish we had more pieces of the track to stretch our train in a wider circuit around the tree--we may have to see if Santa can give us a hand with that wish!


Speaking of Santa, Flannery and her cousin went to see Santa Claus to get photos taken yesterday, and I had NO idea that Flannery was going to ask him for "a baby doll that really peepees and really poo-poos." I really really really reeeeally didn't see that one coming!!  She had been asking for a D.S. for 6 months, so I was just shocked.  And now I have to do some research on which doll that "really pees and poops" is the least annoying in terms of clean up.  The things we have to research as parents.  :)

Anyway, these little Christmas traditions, like the Christmas train and pictures with Santa, bring me such joy.  I love creating predictable and sweet memories for my daughter and niece, and for all my beloved friends and family, really.

What traditions from your childhood do you hold on to?  Have you created any new ones of your own?

5 Reasons Halloween is the Best Holiday Ever

Halloween is really the best holiday ever.  I remember my friend Nikki telling me when Flanna was a baby, that after her kids got a little older, she loved Halloween even better than Christmas.  I couldn't believe it at the time, but now I'm beginning to see why Halloween really could trump Christmas as the best holiday ever.  Here are five reasons why:

1.   There are tons of fun traditions to share.   At my house, we've participated in the following super-fun traditions (which have all brought me big happiness boosts, by the way!):  decorating our front bushes with "spider-webs," creating ghosts from dum-dum pops and tissues, picking out a pumpkin, carving said pumpkin, baking pumpkin bread, finding the perfect costume, going to fall festivals, and of course, trunk-or-treating!

2.  We have an excuse to buy candy and keep it in the house for a week or two.  Not the healthiest reason, but, hey, candy is fun now and then!  Especially Twizzlers.  Yum.

3.  We get to dress up and be silly.  I love love love that my whole family dresses up to trick or treat together.  This year, we won't have a theme for our costumes.  (We would've never been able to top last year's costume, anyway!)  But we're really excited about our outfits!

4.  There's no pressure to buy gifts or cook anything fancy.  No wondering whether the turkey is really cooked all the way through; no stressing over the perfect gift for anyone; no intricate recipes to follow, no hoping you didn't burn the rolls this year.  Heck, you don't even have to buy candy if you don't want to.  Just turn your porch light off and go trick or treating!  (Although I highly recommend passing out candy if you get the chance--it's probably more fun than trick-or-treating, I think!)

5.  Much of the fun happens outside during a time of wonderful weather.  And you know how experiencing nature makes me happy!  I mean, really--who can be sad when you're tromping through pumpkin fields on a breezy day, or riding on a hay ride bundled up beside friends, or walking down streets lined with gorgeous orange and yellow trees to trick-or-treat?  

So, what do you think?  Is Halloween the new Christmas?  All the magic but none of the headache?  All of the fun and none of the expense?   Or do you think it's too dark and spooky to claim rank among the top holidays?  I have to say, it really is one of my favorite times of year.  So there you go, Nikki, you were right!

What do you love about Halloween?

   

Try, Try Again

 I remember the first time I pulled out a set of leggos with Flannery, and I was so excited to share what had been one of my favorite toys as a kid with my daughter.  

Trouble was, though, that she picked up a leggo, tried in vain to push it down onto the base, then gave up in disgust and moved on to another toy nearby.  I tried not to be too crestfallen, but I had really hoped that she would share my love of building and patterns and even architecture.  

But, as the saying goes, if at first you don't succeed...

I brought out the leggos a few weeks ago, and this time, Flanna built a whole house frame all on her own.  I helped her add the roof and the porch, but the main building was all her own doing!   We worked on the little house for close to two hours, and sweet Flanna just didn't want to stop working until it was perfect.  It was really fun, and such a happy moment for me to pass down an activity I had so enjoyed at her age.   

Sometimes I need to remember that the first experience or the first response to an activity or skill isn't the be-all end-all.  Backing off and then re-introducing the activity later can sometimes work wonders.  

You'd think potty training a toddler would've taught me that.  How quickly we forget!

What do you need to try, try again with your kids or students?  What do you need to back off from for a bit?

Tiny Dancers: Share a Family Tradition

Flanna and her cousin participated in a ballet camp last week, and they had a mini-recital yesterday.  Robi and I had to work, but Flanna's Grammie and my sister went and took pics for us.   Warning:  there are serious amounts of adorability to follow!

My sister and I took dance together as kids for many, many years, and I remember summer dance camps as being really wonderful experiences.  It was so nice to get to pass that experience down to our girls, and especially neat that they could be in the same class for the camp.  Yet another perk of living near the fam!  I've found in doing my happiness project that sharing and creating family traditions brings me real joy, and I hope dance camp can become a regular part of the girls' summers from now on.

This one's my favorite!

What traditions do you want to pass on to another generation?

Create Traditions

Is this not the cutest pinata ever?

It was only in doing my happiness project that I realized how much happiness little traditions  bring me.  And the cool thing I realized is, that we don't have to just rely on traditions that are already in place for that happiness boost--we can create new traditions for ourselves whenever we like it!

So, today, upon arriving home at 4:30 and discovering that I had somehow left my cell phone back at work, my mind immediately jumped to taking the whole family out for dinner on the way back to work to get my phone.  And, then, my husband suggested Mexican, you know, since it's Cinco de Mayo.

And boom!  The whole evening became a celebration!  One that I hope we'll continue next year, because it turned out to be pretty fun!

We stopped by my school, let Flanna play in the sensory room for a few minutes, headed to Torrero's (where red, green, and white balloons were everywhere), and chowed down on some chips, cheese dip, and amazing carnitas.  And suddenly, as I watched Flanna gingerly dip a tortilla chip in warm cheese, I was picturing us doing the same thing next year, and maybe getting a pinata for Flannery's class for Cinco de Mayo, too.  And wearing giant sombreros out to dinner.  (Okay, maybe we won't go that far, but the pinata's a good idea, right?)

Create new traditions.   On the fly.  Whenever you want.  'Cause you're fun like that.



50 bonus points to the person who can tell me the reason we celebrate Cinco de Mayo, without googling it!  (I mistakenly thought it was Mexican independence day!  Have I mentioned I'm terrible at history?)

Keep Old Traditions Alive

One thing I've discovered about myself during my happiness project is that carrying on family traditions brings me happiness.  One funny (if not strange?) little family tradition we have with Flanna is that, whenever we see a tree stump, we go stand on it, raise our hands high, pretend that we are a tree, and sing "Oh Christmas Tree" to the person standing on the stump.  This strange tradition started when Flannery was only about 2 years old.  Each year, our neighbor back in Athens would place a live Christmas tree on a stump in front of his house, complete with lights.  Each day as we would go on our walk, we would stop at the Christmas tree and sing, "Oh Christmas Tree."  But then, one day in January, the Christmas tree was gone.  Our neighbor had, of course, taken it down.  Flannery, always a lover of "sameness" and routine, insisted that she could be the tree and climbed up on the stump, stretched her arms tall, and sang the song.  In that moment, our odd family tradition was born.  

And now, we just can't pass a stump without being quirky and odd and singing Christmas Carols in February.  

Here's Flanna finding stump stages at the park down the street. 

by a cool mural

What weird family traditions do you enjoy?

The Earliest I've Ever Put up a Tree

This is the earliest I've ever put up my Christmas tree. We usually travel at Thanksgiving, and then I put my tree up a week before we leave to travel again for Christmas, and then I get home after the New Year and feel guilty about keeping the tree up forever, and then I finally take it down mid January.

But not this year!

This year, I'm going to enjoy this tree for a few weeks before we travel for Christmas. I'm going to turn all the lights off in the living room and sip hot cocoa and listen to Christmas music in my pajamas and just stare at the tree.

(I promise I'm not 70 years old--I just like pretty things--and hot cocoa--and pajamas!)




Anyway, you can see that Flanna helped out a lot! (First, by putting every ornament on the same one branch.)



This was just too cute to move right away. But I let my OCD tendencies get the best of me and had to spread them out after a few hours.

Flannery was thrilled to be allowed to use the step-stool to decorate, and even though I kept having visions of her leaning into the tree and taking a face dive straight into the pointy icicle ornaments, she was amazingly careful, and no ornament or 4 year old came to any harm, whew!



Some of my favorite touches on the tree this year are:

the new icicle ornaments I got for a crazy bargain at the end of last season (they add so much shine!)




the tiny bird ornament I've had for 2 years now. It's simple but so cute.



and this special rose bell ornament that used to belong to my Grandma Norma before she passed away. Five years ago, I would've scrunched my nose up at those pink and mauve flowers on a bell, but it just so captures her love of all things pink and shiny, that it makes me smile to see it now.





What special objects do you treasure? And when do you normally put up your Christmas tree?

Share and Create Family Traditions

You're probably tired of hearing me go on and on about the joy that sharing family traditions brings me, but I just had to share this sweet experience. One of my favorite traditions is the holiday visit with Santa Claus. Our local mall has a really great Santa. He's so jolly! We were lucky enough to have my niece visiting with us this weekend, so we took the girls to see Santa a little early in the season. Both of the grandmothers, my hubby, and my sister got to go with us, too, so it was fun to share this tradition with all of them! It was a wonderful visit...not crowded at all, and we topped the day off with dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, which is an old tradition my friend Kelley and I used to share back in Boston. Fun!

During her chat with Santa, Flannery asked for a giraffe with a long neck and a new Baby Alive. Then, on the way out of the mall, she threw a penny in a fountain and wished for a pony.

I love the hope and magic of four year old wishes!








What makes the Christmas season magical for you?

Share and Create Family Traditions

One of the greatest revelations about happiness I've had this year is that sharing and creating family traditions brings me immense joy. Here are some of my ideas as to why this is so:

1. I'm a creature of habit who likes predictability
2. All of my extended family lives at least a day's drive away, so I miss them a lot, and sharing family traditions makes me feel closer to the people that passed the traditions down to me (i.e., my family).
3. I feel like I'm doing something right when I share a family tradition with my daughter, which feels good.
4. Traditions make our little 3-person family feel like a real team of people who belong together.
5. I'm a homebody, and sharing family traditions adds a little fun to days spent in our little home/neighborhood.

So obviously, if I need a happiness boost, I just need to engage in some good old fashioned family tradition. And in my family, that means doing one of the following:
a) taking pictures. - Huge group photos in which teenagers roll their eyes and someone holds a dog to get them to stay in the picture are the utmost pinnacle of photo success in our family tradition.
b) making chocolate chip cookies. - From scratch. Using my mom's recipe. Yes, you must eat at least a few spoonfuls of the dough. No, so far I've never gotten salmonella. Yes, I do realize it's bound to happen one day.
c) going on a walk - preferably in the woods. preferably at sunset. preferably someplace where you'll pass some horses and be able to throw them an apple or a carrot. preferably walking not for exercise, but for taking in the scenery.

Since I live in downtown Durham, I typically have to settle for a walk around the block and then a or b. Or both.

So yesterday, Flanna and I made homemade chocolate chip cookies from scratch by my mom's recipe, then put the cookies on my grandma Norma's retro hand-me-down platter.

It was super fun. And the cookies, I wish you could taste them, or even just smell them. Yum. A definite happiness booster.





What family tradition do you love to keep?

Be Silly

This weekend was really just too much fun. We dressed up for Flanna's school Halloween party on Saturday, and then today, we dressed up again for the neighborhood party and trick or treating. Flannery went as Ariel. My husband was King Triton (Ariel's dad), and I went as Ursula the Sea Witch.

We had such fun being silly in our costumes, and it made us all really happy to be silly together. I'm hoping this will be a tradition we carry on for many years.








How can you be silly or light hearted more often with your family?