Traditions
I have a couple of drafts written and waiting in the wings here to get posted, but I haven’t had time to edit them and doll them up with links and pictures yet. In the meantime:
I had a decent weekend. I didn’t get nearly as much done as I would have liked, but it was still enjoyable. One of the biggies on my list was to clean out the Jeep. One of the kids had spilled yogurt, or milk, or some other stench inducing agent into the carpets, and the Jeep has been pretty stinky for a while now. I don’t have a garage, so there’s no easy way to clean out the interior when it’s below freezing and blizzarding out. This past weekend, though, I finally got a nice day.
After our trip down to Costco in Denver, I took the Jeep to get washed and vaccumed, and then picked up some carpet cleaner and Febreeze from Wal-Mart. After a little elbow grease, and some help from Harrison. we managed to elminate the nasty odors..
The rest of the weekend, we pretty much had family time. That was what the main point of this post was originally supposed to be, but I got sidetracked with the sparkling clean Jeep. 
We’ve started a couple of new traditions in our family. They may seem like minor things, but it’s made a big difference in our overall lifestyle. Kelly and I both work, so our time with the kids tends to be limited to a very short amount of time in the evenings, and some time over the weekends. Our kids go to bed early—between 6:30 and 7:00 pm. They’re actually ready then, which is amazing i know, but they sleep all night and Harrison still has trouble getting up some mornings.
Anyway, we decided we needed to find some ways to make more time for the kids. Out prime target was the TV. TV is this odd thing where it’s very enjoyable, but at the same time you hate it because it sucks so much time from your life. We didn’t really want to get rid of the TV entirely, because there are a few select shows that we all enjoy (namely, American Idol (Go Elliot!), Survivor, Dancing With The Stars, The Bachelor, The Amazing Race, and Battlestar Galactica… that last one is just for me). I admit it—we’re reality TV junkies. At least we’re not soap opera junkies!
We recently got ourselves a DVR because we no longer have a VCR, and we needed a way to start taping American Idol since we’re frequently busy on Teusday evenings. A VCR is cheap, I know, but I’ve always hated messing around with those stupid tapes and stuff. I’ve been resistant to the whole DVR thing because I couldn’t see the big deal about them… so, it’s just another way to tape shows. Who cares?
Boy was I wrong! The DVR is one of the greatest TV-related innovations to come along in some time. Why is it so great? Well, programming is all based on your on-screen guide. No longer do you have to worry about seeting recordsing times and crap like that. You just tell the DVR which show you want to record, and whether or not you want just the one show or the whole series. It handles the rest. It’s practically worry-free! You end up with a nice little list of all of your shows in date order for your viewing pleasure.
Since this has started to become a marketing campaign for the DVR, I’ll digress. However, the point is that the DVR has allowed us to record shows effortlessly throughout the week and spend the evenings focusing on our children.
This has also brought about the advent of two weekly activities we’ve started to enjoy: movie night and game night. This isn’t just something that we’re experimenting with. This is something that we’ve written on our calendar. The kids actually look forward to these nights, especially since we’re not really watching any TV during the week.
Movie night is just for the kids. they get to pick one movie that we all watch together, complete with popcorn, hot dogs, or genuine movie-style candy. This past Friday, we enjoyed Zathura. Yeah, it’s Jumanji in space, but it was still a lot of fun. We even had Harrison’s friend David there to enjoy it with us.
Game night has been a little more challenging since Olivia is so young. We’ve been playing games like Go Fish, Candyland, Cariboo, and a new card game called Wig Out. I’m sure this will evolve as the kids get older.
These two traditions are really a combination of things that both our families enjoyed when we were kids. Kelly’s family regularly played board games together. Mine regularly had a movie night with popcorn and pizza. In both cases, I don’t think anything official was established—it just happened. Since our schedules are so crazy, we decided we’d make it something scheduled so we can remember it, and so the kids have something to look forward to.
I’m hoping to come up with a couple of other regular activities, even if it’s only monthly or bi-annually. It seems stupid that families should need to schedule activities, but the reality is that in this day, with our rediculous American culture of over commitment and time spent on leisure and excess, it is necessary or we lose our families to the culture.