It’s an amazing blessing to love living your life where you are, that’s without a doubt. But one hard thing is living far away from family and those that you long to spend holidays with. For the past 8 years we’ve lived a minimum of 4 hours from our closest relative. Most of the time we make the distance work. Sometimes we make the drive to their house for a visit or a holiday and sometimes they come here.
At least once a year it always happens that there will be a holiday spent with just the five of us here in Houston, with no family. The first few years this was hard for us but now we have found how to make it work so that the day is still amazing and full of joy.
For our family of 5, we choose to think outside the box when it comes to holidays. If our extended family is here then of course we’ll cook a big meal and spend the day nestled together in the living room or playing outside. But when they’re not here, we get on the move!
For Christmas we have a tradition of going out to eat and we all get to order whatever we want. If the girls want ice cream sundaes for dinner with the usually banned soda pops, so be it. Then we take the long way home so we can look at christmas lights.
This year it happened that we spent Easter alone as a family. It was a great day.
To top off the night we stopped for ice cream at Damion’s favorite place.
Yes I loved seeing everyone’s Instagram pictures of their Easter lunch spread out with ham and all the fixings or the pictures of their huge group of family and friends gathered together spending time. It’s a tradition for them because they are close enough to their families to make it happen but that’s just not possible for us to make a tradition.
For now I am very happy with the tradition we have made is to do things differently on the holidays that we spend just with our family of 5. Plus we always choose things to do that keep me from having to cook, so it’s a win win situation.
If you’re in same boat, just make your own traditions even if the tradition is to do things differently every year.
