rushley & crew

As I've started my own family, I've thought a lot about traditions. What are things that I want my family to do to celebrate various holidays and occasions? As I've thought about it, I've often gone to Pinterest to see what ideas are out there. When it comes to birthdays, I've seen that some people celebrate "birthday week" or even "birthday month." In the past when I've seen these things (because the Pinterest scrolling I'm talking about took place years ago), I've thought, "How great! That would be so awesome to be celebrated for a whole week!" I thought that again as I watched the stories of an Instagrammer that I follow, when she said that on each day of "birthday week," the birthday kid gets one present and there is one fun activity. However, my recent experiences with planning Russ's birthday and some Insta stories (that I saw the very same day as the above stories!) from Fun, Cheap, or Free  gave ...

Russ and I have had a few too many Christmases where we didn't solidify how we wanted the season to go beforehand, so then the season came and went without enough intention. To remedy that, it's been on my list  to figure out what we're going to do for Christmas traditions in our house. At one point, I went through all my "25 things to do this Christmas!" lists on Pinterest and I compiled them all in one place, making a three- or four-page single-spaced document. When I looked that list over this year, it was overwhelming, so I kind of decided I wanted to have only a few concrete traditions, and then a short list of other options to do throughout the season. Here's what I came up with, which actually looks like a long list once it's all typed out . . . Decorate for Christmas the day/weekend after Thanksgiving Have matching family Christmas PJ's wrapped up and given on December 1 Participate in Light the World. Have a nativity puzzle that w...