In The Tunnels

For Christmas once my mom gave everyone in my family a jar full of questions for us to answer. We got it years ago with the instruction to pull them out as a sort of journal entry topic when we were older, hopefully married with kids. I plan to answer them all later in my life like intended, but I think it will be kind of fun to answer some of them now. So although no one reads these, I'm going to do one occassionally just for fun. Here we go!

Describe family traditions that you remember

One of the biggest, and especially the most memorable today, is playing Nintendo together at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Today is Thanksgiving and, like usual, all the 'kids' got together downstairs and played Tetris, SuperSmash Bros, and SuperMario. We usually play Dr. Mario too, but we haven't gotten to that yet. I don't remember how long ago our silly little Nintendo tradition came about, but I do remember that it was my idea (Go ME!!). I had been thinking about how kind of normal Christmas Eve was, so I asked Adam and Ashley if they wanted to stay up and play Dr. Mario. Ever since then we have done it every year, and now we have Mark and Katrina playing as well.

Our family has never been particularly big on traditions. And we're a little strange. Perhaps that's why our most prominent tradition includes something so nerdy as Nintendo....haha. Another fun tradition we used to have was going to Lake Powell with the Lethbridge family every year. We haven't been for the last two summers because everyone's at the age where we don't have the time to coordinate a week long trip. The year we stopped it was because Adam and Ashley had work and I had Clayton. I think Synergy tour was the same week as our Powell date, or something like that. However it worked, we ended up selling our half of the time share back to the Lethbridges. We all miss it a lot and I hope that once we all are married and settled down that we'll be able to start going again with all of us and our families.

I loved going to Lake Powell every year, if only for the car ride. I love long car rides. It's a fun time to talk, goof off, and anticipate what's to come. Also, Lake Powell is just pure awesomeness. I'm slightly afraid of being in water because I can't see what's beneath me, but Lake Powell has always been worth it. I'm terrible at wakeboarding, but I've started to enjoy tubing in the past few years. I used to hate it because Bud is a sadistic boat driver and I would always get hurt, but now I find that kind of fun. Masocist....haha. It was also fun hanging out with the Lethbridges. We would always watch "What About Bob," "Groundhog Day," and "The Man Who Knew Too Little." Yay for Bill Murray at Powell. I also loved playing games with them. I'm going to miss Lake Powell. :(

Those are the biggest traditions that I can think of....we have a couple Christmas ones like our candy calendar for December, setting up the tree together, and opening presents together in the morning, but those are all kind of the usual traditions that a lot of families have. Although I do have to say that our family is unique in the fact that it's an effort to get Adam, Ashley and I out of bed on Christmas morning. We're all excited for presents, but rather than getting up at 5 or 6 like most kids, we roll out of bed and into the shower at around 9....we're a little lazy. Well, that's not true. We're just not morning people. And it doesn't help that we've usually stayed up until 5 or 6 the night before playing Dr. Mario.

I love my awkward family. :D