Tradition.

Tradition is VERY important in my family. Every Thanksgiving, we have a huge dinner for 17 people at either my parents' house or my aunt and uncle's house (they trade off each year). It's an entire day of family, football, and fabulous food. This year, however, the adults made the executive decision to have our Thanksgiving dinner at a RESTAURANT. This hasn't happened in my entire life so needless to say, it didn't go over so well with my sister and I. We had a hard time coping with the drastic change; we wanted the same thing we had gotten year after year, but we sucked it up and ended up having a fantastic day with our family.

While it was hard to eat turkey that didn't come out of our own oven, we were back to our old addicted-to-tradition selves the very next day as we made the trek up Skyline to our favorite Christmas tree farm. Travis joined us this year for his first time ever cutting down a Christmas tree! We love putting on boots and gloves to hike up the muddy hills of the farm, swinging the old saw that is supposed to be able to cut through a trunk easily, analyzing tree after tree and trying to avoid the large clusters of ladybugs that have made their homes there. Dad thinks ever tree is too yellow/brown, Mom wants a 10 foot tree that won't fit anywhere in our house, and Megan wants the "fluffy" ones that are so full, there's no way you could fit any ornaments on it. We always manage to find a perfect tree that everyone loves, and we can hear the "hallelujah!" chorus in the background, just like in the movie Christmas Vacation (which we quote year-round due to our excessive watching of it each holiday season). Every year, every Christmas tree hunt is full of laughter, pictures of the whole family being ridiculous, and watching Dad and Travis struggle to saw down the tree due to the "condensation" (excuse??). There's nothing like bringing in a Christmas tree that we found from nature itself, smelling unbelievably good. We spend the whole rest of the day/night decorating it, and every year as tradition would have it, the middle strand of the lights doesn't work AFTER we've already strung the whole tree. Pure comedy.

This year has taught me how important tradition is, how comforting and special it is to do the same family activities every year. However, I've also learned that a little bit of change is okay, that the important part of the holidays is to spend time with the ones you love no matter what you're doing. If I'm eating a home cooked turkey next year, it'll be great only because I'll be with 17 people that I adore. On November 23, 2012, we'll be right back up Skyline, looking for that tree once again. I cannot wait :).

C.