Traditions: Making Memories to Last a Lifetime

It's that time of year again: holiday season. A time celebrating family, togetherness, warm drinks with marshmallows, and traditions! We asked our favorite mamas and moms-to-be to tell us about their family's Thanksgiving traditions. Whether old, new, or borrowed, traditions are a great way to get your little ones in the holiday spirit, and to create memories that will last them a lifetime (or at least until next year). 

A Quality Time Tradition

Our (new) tradition is waking up early and making brunch together on Thanksgiving morning. Last year was the first year we hosted our entire family, so it's nice to just have some "us" time in the morning before we start cooking, everyone gets over, and things start to get crazy. It's the sweet little moments I cherish, and I can't wait for our sweet little girl to be a part of our new traditions next year!

Celebrating Around The World

Living abroad often means holidays without family, ovens too small to fit a turkey and foreign grocery stores that don’t stock pumpkin pie. To avoid sobbing into store bought stuffing, we’ve taken Thanksgiving as an opportunity to make new memories as a mobile family unit.

We’ve replaced football games with muay thai matches in Thailand, where surrounding ourselves with screaming and fighting made us feel right at home. And we’ve traded family dogs circling the table for turkey, for tigers circling the baby on tiger safari in India.

While we’ll always miss being at our families’ Thanksgiving tables, it’s nice to start new traditions as a family of 4. And for moments when a girl just needs some pumpkin pie, we enlist visiting family members to be our mules and stash some cans of pumpkin pie filling in their suitcases. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, even when living the expat way!

Baking Up A Sweet Tradition

My favorite November holiday isn’t Thanksgiving—it’s Pie Day. Pie Day is the day before Thanksgiving, and in my family it’s a tradition that dates back almost as far as Thanksgiving itself (not really, but you get the idea). Every year on Pie Day, the “Aunties” descend upon a chosen home, pull chairs up to the table, uncork a bottle of wine, and peel apple after apple. As stories pile up among the peels, the makings of glorious apple pies begin to take shape. Then on Thanksgiving day, cousins and grandparents alike gather in awe at the line of beautiful pies perched on the counter.

Now that I have a daughter of my own, I intend to fully immerse her in the joy that is Pie Day (minus the wine), and someday hope to be one of the Aunties pulling a chair up to her table.

Look out for more blogs from our new #MomSquad contributors this holiday season, and enjoy celebrating your own family traditions!