Celebration Fun {Family Connections Summer 2012}
Once again I’m joining Aurie, Lisa, Amy, and Connie to share ideas for fun, family activities for the summer. We hope you’ll stop by every Wednesday to share in our theme or link up your own posts about great summertime fun for the whole family!
This week we’re sharing about Celebration Fun…which seems awfully timely since is THE 4th of JULY! {grin}
When I was a child, we were usually celebrating with a cook-out on the 4th. Either at our house or a family friend’s house. There was always hot dogs and hamburgers, macaroni salad, and usually those little Hug barrel drinks that my kids are so crazy about.
And fireworks. Always fireworks. (Usually from a nearby state that’s not so strict about those sorts of things.) And sparklers. And it was usually really hot and humid with a brief rain shower that always made us worry there wouldn’t be fireworks.
As an adult, I’m not sure we have a tradition for Independence Day. Every year is a little different. We’ve done small fireworks at home. We’ve watched bigger fireworks with friends. We’ve gone to concerts with massive firework displays. I’m not sure what our tried and true “tradition” is.
Have you ever struggled with defining what your traditions are as a family? I think all young families face this, but some are eased into it by participating in their families long-time celebrations for a while. Christmas was a real struggle for me after the accident because our Christmas celebration was always going home to my parents house. It took us a while to hammer out what Christmas looks like for our family at our home. I’m still always sad, but I think we’ve figured out what makes Christmas come alive for our children. And I think we’re shaping Thanksgiving as well.
We haven’t really gotten to tacking the 4th of July in any intentional way.
I know this year we’re going to be making patriotic parfaits. We’ll be baking a white angel food cake and then layering that in dessert glasses with whipped cream, strawberries, and blueberries. And I think we’ll be heading down to our Town’s fireworks tomorrow after dark.
Other than that, I guess we’re playing it by ear.
How about you? Do you have any special 4th of July traditions? Are you finding it difficult to make them happen the way the holiday is falling in the middle of the week this year?
What summer fun have you been up to lately? Link up a new or old post about your great summer family activities. Please keep it family friendly and link to you post, not your homepage.
And be sure to come back next week and join us. The theme will be Outdoor Fun and I’ll be talking about, well, farming or flowers or nature notebooks, or something. We’re pretty outdoorsy around here! {grin}
We don’t really have a tradition. Growing up we were always at a parade or two, a concert, something that our bands were playing at. For the past few years Ken’s aunt has a pool party which is super fun!! No fireworks here in NJ, so we just strain to see the ones from PA 🙂
I really appreciate this. Developing traditions as our own little family is a challenge. We want to be intentional to shape them around our beliefs and still incorporate the heritage we have from each of our families. It is a delicate dance of cherishing our pasts and defining our future and adding healing hearts into the mix and there’s just a greater desire to embrace each day we have together.
Fireworks sounds like a tradition for you, even though your method of implementing is a little different each year. On most holidays, I print coloring pages for the kids in the morning and they color throughout the day. My 13 year old still wants her coloring pages…