traditions

With our family, we've adopted a couple traditions in the last few years that I think might just stick.

The first is reading Christmas books by the Christmas tree each night. 24 books are wrapped by December 1st and we open a new one each night and then read some others as well, just for good measure. There are some really good Christmas books out there. Its an advent calendar of sorts in hopes of eluding the dreaded question: is tomorrow Christmas? Well, not if there's still books under the tree.

 

If you noticed my heart-shaped bokeh you get a special prize. 

 The second is a mix-up of an OLD Packer family tradition of having French Pancakes every morning from Christmas till New Year's Day. Since we've been in Texas, we've taken it an extra step by adding in "a morning of friends" some time during the Christmas break. I pinch myself every year for failing to take pictures. This year, I even set out my camera, but alas, no pictures. Sad me. 

But, I did get this gem. Here is Packer generation #3 of French pancakes teaching Packer generation #4 the ins and outs. I hope he's paying close attention.

Tradition tells that you make the batter ahead of time and it gets better each day (this is actually true). This year, we made 15 times the recipe. That's 30 eggs. It only lasted till Thursday.

Traditions are cool. They're what make your family... yours. And as long as we keep 'em simple, I'll remain a fan.