November 25, 2020

I am thankful for traditions. Some traditions have been passed down for eons like Santa Clause and Christmas Trees. Some traditions are unique to countries or cultures. But the best traditions are unique to our families. Even some of those have been passed down for generations.

For the last 20 plus years since all my children were married we have had a tradition for Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and family vacations. I kind of made a deal with each of my "soon-to-be" in-law's parents that they could have the kids on all the holidays as long as I could have them the day after Thanksgiving (which has been moved to the Saturday after Thanksgiving) and Christmas eve. Since all my children married locally AND within 15 months of each other AND they still live locally I could have them all for each holiday too without having to trade back and forth each year. It has been working great all these years and been a wonderful blessing for all of us.

We call our Thanksgiving day "Thanksgiveagain". Due to the COVID restrictions this year we have had to cancel our Family tradition. I am going to miss just watching everyone hang out together. I love watching my kids and their eternal companions sit and talk about anything and everything in their lives. I love to watch all my wonderful grandchildren pair off and play together with their cousins. I remember times when they were little and how much giggling and running and noise it was. I see them growing and maturing and joining the adults in conversation now. Oh, we still have some little ones that still giggle and run and play. My kids all had their kids at the same time so the cousins have someone close to their age to pair off together with.

I remember one family vacation we had when we only had 5 or 6 grand children at the time.

Alena Langford

and

Alyson Wilcox

are about 7 months apart. Alena was approaching two and Alyson was about a year old. I was so excited for them to play together and become best friends. It didn't happen quite the way I planned. They spent the entire weekend eyeing each other with the look that said something like, "You can't be around her, she's MY Grandma!" Neither girl would let me out of their sight, nor would they let each other out of their sights. They both wanted on my lap, one on each knee, and would just sit there and stair at each other. It really was quite funny to watch. Part of me was sad as I wanted them to become good friends. I just needed to wait until they got a little older. Once they understood that I could be grandma to both of them things were better. They did grow up to become great friends. I loved having them over to our house they were inseparable. I remember how much fun they had putting together a scrapbook of all the grandchildren. Well they didn't do all the grandchildren, but that was the intent. I guess I'll have to finish it. lol

I hope COVID restrictions will lighten up by the time Christmas rolls around. I hate to have our Christmas Eve tradition get canceled too. We have two very fun things we do at our Christmas Eve celebration. The second one is a white elephant gift exchange for the whole family. With 28 people in the circle it is crazy fun!

The first tradition started when my youngest child,

Sierra Langford

was only 2 years old. We decided we wanted to teach our children the true meaning of Christmas and why we celebrate the day. So instead of just reading the Nativity story out of the scriptures as we had done in the past, we decided we would put on a Nativity play for our extended family. At that time we were living in Southern California where I grew up and had Christmas Eve at my parents home with most of my brothers and their families. So we practiced acting out the parts while Dad read the scriptures. One of the boys was the Inn Keeper, the other Joseph. MyLiege was Mary and Sierra was the Angel. After we had practiced several times Sierra started repeating what the Angel said. We thought it would be cute to have her say the part for our play and at two years old she managed to memorize "Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy..." She knew the whole verse. It turned out great. The first Fast Sunday in January , Sierra wanted to bear her "testimony" so I went up with her to prompt her if she needed it. I had to hold her up. She grabbed the podium with both hands and in a strong, clear voice said, "Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy..." She proceed to say the whole verse. It was so cute.

We eventually had to give all the kids speaking parts and over the years it evolved into a very nice production with song and word. As the kids grew up we continued to do the Nativity...even after they got married. I told them they had to continue until they had a child who could replace them. Both my boys had girls first so they performed a long time. lol. Now the grandchildren do the whole show. Sometimes it is a little silly as they try to be creative with their speaking parts, but always the scriptures and the innocence of youth bring the spirit into our beloved tradition.

I love traditions!

#givethanks

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26Sierra Langford, Kylee Wilcox and 24 others

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