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Last Updated on January 26, 2015 by melissanreynolds
Being a relatively new family, I have all sorts of ideas for some rituals and traditions and I have spent this first year of marriage deliberately putting the framework in place for our own little family traditions. Some we have started and some we have to wait for our boy to be a little older for, but here they are:
- Family date day – recently we took advantage of a midweek day off (my husband works rotating shifts which include weekends) and wandered to the local beach where our nine month old was placed on varying items, including trees for us to photograph and for his delight. He adored the swing and turning wheel. On the way home we stopped for coffee. Divine. While baba and my husband napped in the afternoon, I got to read! Perfection.
- Christmas Eve tradition – I recently read an article about Christmas Eve Boxes in which you can put new pairs of pajamas, popcorn, hot chocolate, a new game and a Christmas movie. I’d like to do this when my boy gets older. We just have to fit it in with my husband’s family’s tradition of midnight mass and present swapping (after midnight mass, I know, late!)
- Birthday Sleepover Tradition – I like the idea of the three of us getting into pajamas and sleeping bags and snuggling up to watch a movie together (it could be like the Christmas Eve one!).
- Anniversary traditions – because my husband’s family typically celebrates anniversaries with parties and in mine it is celebrated by the couple (think date night, alone) I have decided we are double celebrating! We are going to do a family lunch party and a fancy date night together.
- Date nights – being in our first year of marriage and parents of a baby, I like to make the most of our time together. So we claim “mini date nights” regularly. We will either cook something nice for each other or order in. We typically snuggle up together and watch a movie we have been meaning to see. This is something I have deliberately put in place, even when I’m exhausted and sore, because if we start the way we mean to go on, then we will be having date nights and celebrating our relationship for years to come!
- Time out – one of our resolutions this year is to have one night a month off. We started it off in January with a night away for a friend’s wedding, while my mother stayed at our house with the baby. It was lovely. We hope to alternate weekends alone with weekends with friends.
Are there any other family rituals that you follow?
