Grease Me Up, Scotty: Family Traditions

Family traditions. I probably would have said we don't have them, but we've started to collect some. Since Brandon's death, I've realized that most of our traditions aren't major, huge annual events. They are weekly or daily things. And those are the ones I'm most grateful for anyway, because our family is memorializing itself on the regular! Not in a haughty way, but just celebrating us for us. And I feel like that's all the more opportunity for Brandon to peak his head through the spiritual door and participate in fun family life. Some of our frequent family traditions:

-Friday night pizza night (a tradition we adopted from another family; also the inspiration for this post's title, even though it has nothing to do with Star Trek)

-In-home testimony sharing (kids and parents alike would each share a brief testimony of some aspect of the gospel of Jesus Christ; for a while, we did this every morning, but with changing schedules, this became less frequent, but still important)

-Hugs (before bed, upon greeting, and as often as possible really)

-Morning couple prayers (since Brandon and I were usually up well before the kids)

-Evening routine: read stories to kids, say a family prayer, read scriptures, and then sing songs. (My husband always left the room after scriptures so that I could sing the kids to sleep. Then, one day we laughed pretty hard when my daughter asked, "Why does Daddy always leave the room when Mom sings?")

-Family Home evenings

-Hikes

-Runs (we'd push our kids in a jogging stroller all over town and beyond!)

One thing we didn't do that I wish we had now is take nice family photos. Brandon and I used to joke that we never have been one of those families to pose for photos in matching denim, atop haybales. But now what I wouldn't give for a recent family photo, even if it were cliche! But at the same time, I have found that we took a lot of family "selfies." Most of our photos of us as a whole family are tightly cropped, with our faces shmushed together in the frame and some beautiful landscape barely visible behind our heads. It's nice, because it reminds me how much we actually were able to do as a family. So I guess, ultimately, I'm ok with not having neatly posed, perfectly preened family portraits, because, well, that's just not us. We're a bit more messy, spontaneous, and shmooshy.

And so are our traditions! They're not super well scripted or organized, but they mean so much to us. I'm grateful for every moment we had as a family, and for every moment we will still have.