It's not always easy to keep them up. Some days I'd rather be lazy than do what is expected of me. But right now, in the midst of this gigantic change we've thrust upon our kids, I think it's really important not only to keep up the traditions we've already created, but to create some new ones for them in our new home.
Two of our favorite traditions are Breakfast-for-Dinner Tuesdays and Family Movie Night Fridays (which also includes pizza for dinner). Now, the Breakfast for Dinner Tuesday actually has existed in our home since before we had kids! Many moons ago, I was a little more organized (but only a little) and for a season did menu planning - something I should actually get back into. And on Tuesdays we always had Breakfast. It's something we've carried on since having our kids, and now they know to expect it each week. Sometimes it's pancakes (their favorite - I make them from scratch!), or french toast, french toast casserole, waffles, eggs, etc. We always try to match it with healthy sides (fruit, yogurt, turkey bacon :)). Pizza on Fridays was actually something a family I knew growing up did each week - only she made their pizzas from scratch (and cut them with SCISSORS! I loved it!). Now we've made sure that on almost every Friday we have Family Movie Night as well. We even did it in the middle of packing and moving, when we didn't have our big screen TV, or Daddy, at the old house:
These are things, events, that our kids have come to rely on. They know, no matter where we are or what's going on around us, we'll have breakfast on Tuesday evenings - by the way, we arrived in our new city on a Tuesday evening, and after freshening up at our new house we headed straight to IHOP where we all got our choice of Breakfast for Dinner - and we'll have pizza and a movie on Fridays. Even when they get pizza at school for lunch (which, really, only Trey gets and I figure it's not much different than eating leftover pizza for your next meal after ordering out...so what if he eats pizza twice in a row? He loves it!).
We are going to work on other traditions that we feel are important too - involving prayer and reading our bibles and church. We have traditions at holidays (always open a present on Christmas Eve, which happens to be new pajamas), and those will be important over the next year as we are far from what we all know as "Home" and have to make this new place our Home now.
Kids are resilient, and I know that all this change and chaos isn't going to traumatize them or hold them back. But I also know it's still hard on them - they have to make all new friends, learn the rules of a new school, figure out our new neighborhood (I'll take it as a good sign that neighbor kids are knocking on our door just about every day asking them to come out and play). I think holding on to certain things from our "old life" will help them settle down in our "new life."
