I love these two little happy faces and I love our weekends!
Every Saturday when we are in town in the summertime, we go to the Lake Oswego Farmers Market!
This has been a family tradition ever since we have had kids and even though every week we see a-lot of the same stuff at the market, we still continue to go and enjoy it.
Jason and I feel that it is so important to create family traditions.
After a long week of work and juggling busy schedules, we feel it is important to have some stability and something to do together that we look forward to.
Aside from holiday traditions, we have daily connection traditions with our children, such as dinner together as a family every night.
Daily connection traditions are those small activities we do every day that re-enforces our family values, bond and stability.
I read an article once that asked a group of adults what they remember most about their childhood. 90% responded by describing everyday traditions like family dinners, bedtime stories, and watching television shows together.
Growing up my family had lots of traditions and I am 100% convinced that happy childhood memories offer positive benefits that follow you into adulthood.
When Jason and I became parents, we wanted to create this same environment for our own kids.
Some of our family traditions are daily, weekly, monthly and yearly.
To give you an idea, here are some of our traditions:
Daily: We have dinner together as a family every single night. No excuses unless something really urgent comes up for work. I’m usually the one making dinner so I am already there but Jason makes it a point to be present and have dinner with us.
This is where we talk about our day, connect and kick off our evenings together.
Weekly: In the wintertime we do Friday night family movie nights at home with pizza and homemade cookies.
In the summertime we do Friday night ice cream drives (we go for a ride and get ice cream or we walk) and on Saturday mornings we go to the local Farmers Market.
It is close to our house now so we can walk there and get fresh flowers and seasonal fruit or veggies and listen to the live music. The kids already know the weekend is here because we have pancakes for breakfast and go to the Market and they get excited every time!
Monthly: Once per month we like to do a restaurant dinner with the kids. We get dressed up and do a little family date night.
Yearly: Once per year we like to go on a long family vacation. We went to Maui in May this year and had so much fun.
We also do the annual holiday traditions like: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, etc and each holiday has it’s own set of traditions that go with it.
Here are a few photos from the market this weekend! By the end Claire was so tired she wanted to fall asleep in my lap! Too much fun!
I’ve been living in my Agolde shorts this summer. Find them here!
Why are traditions important?
Traditions are rituals families engage in over and over. There is a reason we intentionally maintain and create traditions – it’s because they bring meaning to our every day life and build bonds, stability, and brings us close together, every day.
But even more important, traditions create positive memories for Charlie and Claire.
We have noticed that they thrive on a stable schedule, traditions that they look forward to, and having both parents present and involved.
So yes, we do a lot of the same things but we love it! It keeps us grounded and close and in our house, family is everything!
What is life if you don’t have family to share it with anyway?!
I’d love to hear what some of your favorite little traditions are! Share them in the comments below!
