Family Traditions

In some ways, I'm still a very old fashioned person. I prefer letters over mails or short texts and I am sucker for traditions.

My family has a couple of them and one of my favourite one is that every academic year, they would give us kids a trophy for doing well. Even if we get a B, we still get a plaque because it reminds us that we did good, but that we can do even better. I absolutely loved it and looked forward to that at year end. Mick just got her very first trophy this year for completing LKG and she's extremely happy about it. I hopefully want to do something similar with my kids. 

Another tradition is that we always have family meals together on weekends, especially evening tea. Now that we're all extremely busy there really isn't time everyday to sit down and eat (I try to eat while reading or watching something to save time) and so weekends are just really good for the family to come together and have a good time. 

My family moved quite a bit and we used to live apart from dad for a couple years and those were the years when I learned what letters were capable of. My dad would write a letter every week and send to me and I would write back and I looked forward to that latter every week. It was like golden ticket to me, something that was just beautiful and even when dad was telling me off for something terrible I did, it always made me feel good. Written words kind of have that effect on me  

This one, is personally one of the things I love, but a lot of people have different opinions on it. It's more of proper manners and upbringing rather than tradition but we always talk to mom and dad using the "emme mathee dharaja" as in saying "aadhe" for yes and so. No, it doesn't go as farther as using "naaneyfulhu fillevun" (haha, that word cracks me up every time) but I love talking to my parents like that, I was brought up to talk t everyone like that but obviously as I grew up, different circles because different but this one thing stayed the same. Some people would just make fun of me for picking the phone when mom or dad calls and saying "assalaamu alaikum" instead of hello, but that feeling of actually showing your folks that you care is what matters. I know different people have different ways of caring and some would argue that just because I talk to my folks in that way doesn't make me any better than anyone who doesn't and I would agree because it doesn't. No one's better or worse for that matter and I strongly believe that comparing one life to another to decide who's better is a meaningless task to do so I prefer not doing it and sing my time to do things that are meaningful to me, like writing letters.   

I have so many plans of family traditions I would want to do with my kids it's crazy! I mean yes, the whole marriage, kids, blah blah thing is so scary and I don't even want to think about it but sometimes when you see someone passing a heirloom to their grand daughter, you just want to be that person. Maybe it's just me. haha

Do you have any exciting family traditions?