BLOGAHOMA

I have never thought of myself as traditional but in fact my traditional side has taken years to emerge. But my traditional is nontraditional traditional. For instance this year I decided to download itunes Christmas music while my husband daughter assembled the new gas grill my husband got for Christmas.

But what about New Years?  As a family we stayed in many more years than went out. Home with the kids watching the Ball drop in NYC on TV and then one year, 1986 in fact, I thought we should write our resolutions down and put them in a container. What I had was an Antique Quick Mother Oats container c1912. We began with a simple format which included the year, our names, weights, heights (fun to watch the kids grow; not so fun watching our weight fluctuate) our favorite movies, songs, words, and events of the year. The hard part came when we made our resolutions and put them in writing and then predictions. We were halfway okay with our resolutions but NEVER good with predictions. Every year we would take out last years and previous years and have a laugh of what we wrote and some serious moments too on what we lost and what we gained. When the kids became adults we were not consistent about always doing them but as we happened to be together for the holidays in 2007 we added that year. It a little more complicated since we don’t live in the same towns. This morning we were checking the back of the cupboards to find the box filled with remembrances scrawled on all manner of note paper. It has been with us through 3 moves. It is one of the few things I am really sentimental about.  So again this year I sent out a plea to have our New Year’s Report. Since we stay connected by the internet I emailed out a form I made in Word. And the reports came in. They will be added to the Mother’s Oats box and the Virtual Mother’s Oats box so we can look back on 2009.

I recommend this tradition for families, couples, and or friends. I added this to the email to the family:

Note: Feel free to modify. For instance I added a place for my blood pressure reading and favorite websites. I added more lines for events and less for TV. No need to fill out any area you don’t want. Replace some favorite for new one EXAMPLE favorite clothes, foods etc.

And these endnotes:

•   These should be personally significant (note on events)
•   We usually suck here but try anyhow ( note on the predictions)

Now go to it and create some new traditions for yourself!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 at 3:23 am and is filed under Philosophy, Writing. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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