How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Since I was nine years old, it has been a Christmas tradition of mine to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas. My children never seemed to care for the show and my grand kids like it even less. But I am NOT daunted by them.

What could be wrong with a story about a creature who  absolutely hates everything about Christmas because of the noise surrounding an entire town on Christmas Day. The Grinch comes up with a plan of of disguising himself as Santa to steal everything representing Christmas belonging to the Whos believing it will be enough to stop the holiday from coming.

In the end, after he accomplishes his task, he notices the town still sing and celebrate Christmas. The Grinch questions, "How could it be so, it came without ribbons, it came without bows, it came without tags, it came without packages, boxes or bags. Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store." Touched by this, his heart grew three sizes larger and he returned all of their gifts, food and decorations.

I can't wait to play How the Grinch Stole Christmas this year--my 45th consecutive year!

I Love Family Traditions

I love traditions which are wholesome and memorable--those which are passed down from generation to generation. I especially enjoy those which we have observed for so long and no one remembers how they started.

For many years on Halloween I made chili for dinner. When the kids got home from trick-or-treating like it or not they had to have a bowl of chili. Some of my children like chili and some would rather not partake--but we had it anyway.

Yesterday as my daughter Cassy was preparing for a Halloween night with her family, she told me she already had taco soup in her crockpot for when the kids returned from trick-or-treating. Apologetically she said, "I wanted to keep up the chili tradition, but Brayden doesn't like chili. So I decided to [tweek] it a little and make taco soup a tradition for us."

I took that as a wonderful compliment. Hopefully some our good traditions can withstand the test of time.