Favorite Traditions: FAMILY NIGHT!

So once a week during the #write31days challenge, I thought I would write about our family,  especially sweet Sania Louise. :)

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So today, I want to tell you about a little tradition in our house that all of our kids love.  It’s called “Family Night,” and it always takes place on Fridays.  It is a tradition that my husband had with  his family growing up, and he always loved it.  So when Jonathan was just a baby, we started it in our house. 

Every Friday night, everyone sleeps in our room!

First it was just Jonathan sleeping with my and Cy, and boy did He love all of the attention.  But then Luke came along a couple years later, and there were four of us in the bed.  It was a little tighter, but we made it work. 

When Adam came along, things started getting crowded in the bed, so we got a King size bed.  Best decision ever!  

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All five of us would snuggle under the blankets every Friday night and watch a movie and eat popcorn.  Sometimes we would go out and do something fun like bowling, or play at the park, but the real treat to my boys was sleeping in our bed when we got back home.  :)  (Btw, we never let our boys sleep with us when they were newborns.  That wouldn’t be safe.  We waited until they were older and it was safe for them to sleep with us.  The picture below was the only one I could find of them little and in the bed, but Adam would have been too little to sleep all night with us at that point.   Just wanted to clarify.)  :)

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When Eli came along, some boys got bump to the floor.  By this time, Jonathan was 8, Luke was 6, and Adam was 3.  We would make a pallet in the floor for Jonathan and Luke, and Adam and Eli would sleep with us.  

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A couple of years ago, I got a queen sleeper sofa to go in the sitting area of our master bedroom so no one has to sleep on the floor anymore. 

Now Sania Louise is enjoying Family Night, and it is by far her favorite night of the week!  Every day she asks me, “Today family night?”  And I have to tell her how many days are left until Friday.  (It’s actually been a great way to teach her the days of the week in English!) ;)

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She gets to sleep in the middle of me and Cy, and Adam and Eli sleep on the sleeper sofa.  And well, I have to be honest….Luke and Jonathan are not always sleeping in our room now that they are 15 and 17.  Sometimes we can get them in there, but some times they just sleep on the couches in the family room. :)

This mama hates that they are growing up.  I can’t believe how much they look alike now that they are older.  This was them before the Homecoming dance at school a couple of weeks ago.  #wheredoesthetimego?

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But Eli and Sania Louise are nine (only two days apart) and Adam is only 12, so they still love Family Night a lot!

And I am thankful for all of the fun memories we have made together on Family Night through the years.  Lots of laughter, story telling, and well…a lot of odor, if you know what I mean.  ;)  #boymomproblems

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To me, besides Jesus, FAMILY IS EVERYTHING.  And I am so glad that Sania Louise  now has a family that will love her forever.  And how blessed we are to have a little girl to call our own and complete our little family. 

It will be fun to watch her experience  all of our family traditions  over the years.  Right now, everything is new, so she doesn’t realize that they will repeat again next year.  Like going to the pumpkin patches this fall.  She is loving seeing all of the pumpkins, and we’ve been roasting a lot of marshmallows in the backyard.  It will be fun when she realizes we do these type of things every year.  I am loving watching her settle in to the routine of having a family.  It is so amazing to slowly watch her soul begin to rest.  

I’ll be sharing more with you about Sania Louise in the weeks to come.  :)

What are some traditions you have in your own family?  I would love to hear about them!  I might borrow a few.  {wink}

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11 Comments

  1. What a fun family tradition that you guys have done. My husband’s Grandparents owned a home on Table Rock Lake in Missouri. Every year we took our girls there for vacation over the 4th of July and watched the watched the fireworks from out boat on the lake. Now that they are older and both married we have a home there and the kids come there for the 4th. It’s fun having everyone there at the same time. We have other traditions but when they both don’t live close it makes them harder to do. Time flies by so fast. We have 2 grand-daughters now that love the lake, more great times ahead.

  2. Your family is so precious, and it may just be the photos, but Sania Louise totally looks like she belongs to you – She is so beautiful, and I’m so, so happy that God gave her to you!

  3. My favorite when my girls were little was this: No one had to do dishes on Friday night! We would often make home-made pizza. Pile the dirty stuff in the sink and let them sit. Then we were off to watch a movie!
    On Saturday morning I was faced with scrubbing some pretty stuck on stuff, but enjoying a movie and pizza with the girls made it all worthwhile.

  4. Love, love, love family traditions! My husband and I used to joke that if we did anything twice it was now a family traditions, our kids just love traditions. We even made traditions when we didn’t know we were. When our kids were young we would go to the CSULB baseball games. My husband and our daughter would always go get the hot dogs, one time my husband asked our son if he wanted to go with too (innocent enough, right?). Well, the rest of game we could tell something was bothering our daughter, apparently it was tradition and special that just her and her Dad got the hot dogs. Sometimes the simplest things can mean so much to a child.

  5. So sweet. Little things like this build strong family bonds. Sania Louise is one lucky girl. Pity the poor boy who comes courting with those four bruisers lol!

  6. When our boys were home we would gathered around the supper table at night before we ate and would go around the table and ask what was the best thing that happen today. Our boys r 33 and 23. The 23 is in seminary and 33 yr. old is married and has a 8 week old little boy. Our first grandchild. They still talk about how at night at the dinner table was so fun and important. And then later at night we would have our family devotion and prayer. We all would take turns in doing the devotion different nights of the week. We all looked forward to it. And now our son and his wife want to do that as well with out little grandson. Praise God. Families need more time together in this push button fast pace life. Thank you for sharing. That was neat.

  7. Sundays we always had a huge family noon meal after church so Sunday evenings was “make your own supper” night. We figured one night they could go without having all the food groups on their plates. Choices were popcorn, cereal, warmed up leftovers and even the occasional bowl of ice cream :) but more often then not a big bowl of popcorn.

  8. For many years, well 22 in fact,, we have Christmas breakfast at our house. The grand children don’t want to change that for any thing else. We have about any thing that is breakfast food but the favorite seems to be overnight french toast. We have 2 children and 3 grand children (all grown) but still enjoy coming to poppy and granny’s.

    The grand sons have come home with us from church on Sunday since they were babies. It was just automatic. Bob told them a few years ago he would continue to get them pizza every Sunday as long as they wanted to come. It is hard now as both boys are working but it they can manage they are here. It may only be for 30 minutes but that’s ok.

    We love our family and our time with them. They grown up much to quickly.

  9. Such a beautiful family! Look forward to hearing more. I’m sure it’s not easy but you seem to have it under control. 😃

  10. We do a daddy/son date night on their “special night”. This is once a month on the date of their birthday. So once a month on their birthday day, they have a night with dad! They get to pick the outing or the restaurant (within reason! HA!) The boys look forward to this every month! We also dance to the ending credits of any movie we rent no matter what the music is! HILARIOUS! You never know what type of song will play with the credits and it’s so funny to be surprised and then start dancing together!

  11. Hey Tracy

    Great memories being made in your family. Family time is so important and your kids will hopefully carry on this tradition when they have kids of their own. So happy that Sania Louise seems to be adjusting and so happy looking. She is precious.

    Just curious, was it hard for her to understand that she is living with you permanently now. I would love to see a blog post sometime on maybe the questions she has asked and how you and Cy talked to her about her transition (without getting too personal obviously) :)

    Enjoying your daily post. You are an amazing woman of God and your family is blessed.

    Marilyn C.

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