traditions

Our kids are in that stage between toys and whatever comes next to fill their free time – jobs? Friends? I don’t know. All I know is that Candyland doesn’t entertain them anymore (and I think we’re all a little thankful for that).

It’s hard to know how to occupy our free time well with them when it seems most activities one of us suggests have a 2 or 3 out of 4 approval rate. I have dreams of us being a family that always love spending time together doing wildly creative things, but finding things that all of us consistently want to do feels like trying to find four leaf clovers or the holy grail.

Sometimes, though, it happens. Megan’s been wanting to play a certain game on the trampoline with the whole family for over a week now. She usually suggests doing it immediately after dinner, which causes the adults in the family to preemptively vomit a little just thinking about it. Tonight we gave ourselves a little time to digest and then hopped up there for the game Megan calls “dead man.” It’s basically Marco Polo on the trampoline.

Unfortunately, our son decided he wasn’t into it, so our magical foursome activity looked doomed. A few minutes later, he concluded he was bored enough to join us, and we proceeded to play. In the middle of jumping and laughing and screaming and catching each other, I thought, “This is a victory moment.” It was a sweet time, and I’m thankful for it.

What are you calling victory today?

Living overseas for over a decade means we’ve missed out on many things, particularly autumn activities, because in all that time we never came back during the fall. Now, we had a great community of expat friends which means that we certainly tried to replicate holidays and traditions we’d had in America, but it was never quite the same.

Now that we’re back, we’re trying to figure out which activities we want to do, and how to do them. One of those is jack o’ lanterns. Pumpkins weren’t very big overseas (or if they were, they were expensive) and when you live in an apartment with people who don’t celebrate Halloween, putting a creepily carved lit pumpkin outside your door is sure to disturb the neighbors.

The kids were thrilled the other day to see huge pumpkins at the store for $4 each (I don’t know if this is cheap. It seemed ridiculously cheap to us). Yesterday, despite being tired from a weekend away, I decided it would be a great time to do this with the kids.

I knew, as every parent knows, that I would probably end up doing the majority of the work. Surprisingly, the kids wanted to clean out the insides of their pumpkins themselves, for the most part. Megan named hers Robert Patrick McKinn, nickname Bobrick McKinn, which is decidedly awesome. We decided to write our family name in Mandarin on them, so that was definitely my job with the knife. We were told later that they won’t last long, which is disappointing, but honestly – we’d happily do it again. We’re making up for lost time!

So that’s my victory for Sunday – making memories with the kids. And not only memories, but ones that build into their connection back to the U.S. I’m almost hoping we’ll have to do more (although I’m guessing they won’t be as keen the second time around).

What are you calling victory today?