Childhood Traditions Remembered

 What were some of the family traditions that you remember?

I don't remember having a lot of traditions when I was a child, but here are a few I do remember:

*Going to church each week.  This was important to my mom, and even in the years when my dad wasn't very active, she always got us ready and took us to church.  Now that I've had similar experiences, I appreciate this even more than I did before.  It's hard to go to church by yourself with 3 young children, though for most of my childhood we lived in the same ward as my grandparents. So we sat with them and I can remember often crawling on my paternal grandpa's lap, turning toward him and falling asleep with my face against his scruffy cheek during sacrament meeting.  So I guess my mom wasn't completely on her own with 3 young kids.  Nevertheless, it still required much effort and sacrifice on her part and probably plenty of heartache, so I am forever grateful that this is a tradition that she established and maintained.

*At Christmastime we would go to Sajuaro Ranch Park and have a big family party.  It would be potluck. Grandma Marj always made her delicious potato salad.  (I wish I had the recipe!  Store bought potato salad isn't very good, but I loved her potato salad when I was a kid.)   My aunts and uncles and cousins would be there, and we would play. (Though as I got older, I liked that less because there weren't cousins my age.  Amy and Laura were several years older and then there were cousins that were four years younger and even younger than that.)  My favorite part was always the White Elephant Gift Exchange and the good natured arguments that would break out over the silly gifts.  I couldn't wait to be a grown up and be able to be a part of the white elephant gift exchanges.  

*At Christmas, when I was little, my dad would buy a number of gifts and wrap them and put them in pillow cases.  I can't remember if we'd open them on Christmas Eve (it seems like that was the case, but I'm really not sure) or Christmas morning.  But he'd pull gift after gift out of the pillow cases and it always felt a bit like he was Santa reaching into his sack.  We didn't have much money, but he always made Christmas special.  (As an adult, I realize this probably required a lot of sacrifice for my parents to pull off.)

*Every summer (or nearly every summer) my sisters and I would come up to Utah in the summer and spend about a month at my maternal grandparents' house.  They lived in Holladay.  We would ride bikes around the neighborhood.  We would go to the Holladay branch of the library and check out stacks of books.  I remember going to Activity Days in the summertime and YW activities when I was old enough to attend YW.  My aunt Elaine and uncle Brent would usually take us to Lagoon or to Raging Waters.  Brent got married to Diane, and I absolutely loved her.  And they would take us to Diane's parents' home where we would jump on the trampoline with Diane's younger sisters who were close to my age, and drink soda and eat chips.  Before Brent got married, when I was elementary age, he had a motorcycle and would take us on short rides around my grandparents' neighborhood.  My grandparents had wealthy neighbors, including the owner of the Macey's grocery stores and one of the local weathermen.  There would be a fun ward party in the summer.  And I made friends, especially I remember, a boy named Mark Skinner.  Mark and I watched The Last Unicorn probably 50 or more times one summer.  I loved spending the summer at my grandparents.

*My grandma Marj was a good artist and would often draw us paper dolls. Or my mom would buy us paper dolls and then my grandma would spend hours with us, designing and drawing clothing and accessories and we would cut them out.  I don't actually remember spending much time playing with the paper dolls, though I'm sure we did, but I remember spending lots of time making them.  I don't know that that is considered a tradition, but it's one of my fond childhood memories.

*When my mom remarried, my mom and stepdad started a tradition of doing luminaries on Christmas Eve.  We'd place sand in the bottom of paper bags and put a lit candle in each one and line our driveway and sidewalk with them.  This is a tradition I have carried on into my family now.