New Year's Traditions

It has been too long since I spent time writing in my blogs. But being New Year's Eve, I was thinking about past traditions while I was cooking for today. It dawned on me that I was making spaghetti which once was a tradition for my mom and I on New Year's Eve when I was young. This isn't the same recipe, but is still one of two home made recipes my mom used to make. That got me thinking about other New Year's traditions we had in our home. Then that led me back to the blog to write about them, and to ask you to tell me what your traditions were, or are. It should be an interesting run of comments (assuming I can still get comments...it's been so long since I have been here I don't even know if I have readers left!)

My mom's regular spaghetti recipe used to be my all time favorite food. I guess that is how it got started being a tradition to have it on New Year's Eve. We would watch whatever bowl parade was on and have our supper. Later when I was a teenager, the spaghetti changed to home made pizza. Believe it or not, back in those days, we didn't have the pizza restaurants to go to that they do now. In fact, I think Pizza Hut only came into the nearest city to us about the time I turned 18. And I thought it was horrible pizza! I still like home made best. Those nights we would invite two of my cousins I was close to over along with a couple of friends. We would watch tv and play cards. Usually rummy. And one of my cousins always seemed to get the Aces. It wasn't until a couple years after I was out of high school that he admitted to cheating. He handed me a pullover sweater he wore a lot and told me to look at how baggy the sleeves were. He said he wore it every New Year's Eve and when it was his turn to deal he would always make sure to drop some of the cards on the floor during the shuffle. Then he would pick up aces and stick them up his sleeve. We never did catch on. I guess we were just having too much fun.

My cousins were the ones who taught me how to make home made pizza...Chef BoyArDee of course. That first New Year's Eve together we all worked on the pizza together. The next year, they told me, "What do you think we taught you how to make it for?" and they left it to me while they continued playing cards with my mom! I pretended to be mad but I still made it and that became the tradition from then on until we grew up and went our separate ways.

New Year's Day, my mom kept an old family tradition that she said was passed down through the generations on the German side of the family. She would make us either spare ribs or pork roast with sauerkraut (sweetened with brown sugar) and potatoes roasted together in the oven. She said it was a German good luck meal to have pork and sauerkraut on New Year's Day. I kept that tradition even when I moved out to go to college if I wasn't home for some reason. I stopped it when I married. My husband wouldn't eat pork and I was the only one who liked sauerkraut in my house. After I divorced I kept the tradition a few years, if I thought about it in time to have the ingredients from the store ahead of time. It's like today. I don't have what I need for it and since I made a huge pot of the spaghetti, I won't be making the German meal tomorrow.

Much of my family is Irish but I do not know if there are any Irish traditions for New Year's Eve or not. I sure would like to know though, so if you are Irish and reading this, please be sure to comment and tell me what kinds of traditions your family followed.

Another traditional thing we did in our family was to begin a brand new jigsaw puzzle on New Year's Day. Winter is long and jigsaw puzzles were good activities to keep working at through those long cold days and evenings. It was such fun that we always tried to find some new puzzle that would really be a challenge. Our most challenging puzzle back then was a picture of the fife and drum players from the Revolutionary War. The entire background is brown. The puzzle pieces, for those interested in jigsaw puzzles, were basically interlocking on three sides, were odd shaped for the most part, and many had sides that were almost straight enough to be border pieces. This made finding the actual border pieces really difficult. My uncle liked doing jigsaw puzzles in the winter and we often exchanged puzzles we had completed. While putting the puzzles together we would watch the old classic holiday movies that a fairly local tv channel that was for a time independent would show through the holiday week.

Over the years I have occasionally bought jigsaw puzzles to put together, but again, it wasn't something my husband and children were particularly interested in. They would help once in awhile but not for the time periods I enjoyed.

I really enjoyed the holiday season in those youth and teenage years. It was quiet, peaceful, and we had things that meant something to us. Creating family traditions and keeping the old ones were difficult after I got married. I just couldn't get the point across to my husband and children about how special those traditions could be. Now I am a grandma and creating traditions seems so much more important to me than ever before. And it is even more difficult because it is difficult to even get together for the holidays.

Okay, now it is your turn. Do you remember any special family traditions you shared in your childhood, or later in life? Do you spend time with family traditions now? How did your traditions originate? Please share your stories.

Grandson Games

I got to play with my grandson tonight. He was here from around 3:30 until 10 tonight. I had him here alone while everyone else had things to get done. So we played this new tv plug in game for awhile. He was so excited to show it to me, but then he didn't want to play it for very long. He showed me each of the games that it had, but in about 10 minutes he was all about the new "horse movie" I had bought. He will be 4 in June and he is all about horses. He likes other animals and will sit and watch them in movies and on tv, but it is horses he is in love with. I think he has loved horses ever since he could talk...at least talk clearly. His favorite movie is FLICKA. Today we watched THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER. He really loves watching the wild horses running through the landscapes. But then, so do I.
He surprised me tonight. About halfway through the evening, I asked him to pick up all the toys he got out before he went to get anymore out. He did it without having to be told again. Then, if he wanted more than one toy, he explained to me that he knew I asked him to put things away before he got out more but he wanted to play with them together. He has always hated putting toys away--doesn't any kid? He has always been pretty well behaved, but this really was a nice surprise because I didn't have to keep after him like I have had to before. Then when it was time for them all to go home, I just had to say once for him to get his toys picked up and he went right to it. He made no arguments about getting his shoes or coat on, or anything else we asked him to do. We watched a little bit of the Big Cats on Animal Planet, and while his dad was watching Phil Collins doing a drum performance with some other drummers on a YouTube video, he watched a little of that, then came and sat next to me and started "playing the drums" on his knees.
When his daddy and his daddy's girlfriend came back, we had his little step sister to entertain. Daddy and gf got busy on my computer getting caught up with emails and other things online while I did the grandma thing. Little baby girl and I got to know each other better. While my grandson is almost 4, baby girl is just 4 months old. She is a tiny thing. But she is a fiesty thing, too. She is not going to be one to sit back and watch the world go by. Already she is sitting herself straight up from a reclining position...like doing sit-ups. She will be happy for a little while on her back or in a slightly reclined position. But then she wants up to see what is going on around her. Grandson brought toys and talked to her and played with her. It turned out that she apparently likes this funny duck call thing we have and when he would blow it, she would laugh. She liked it so much that when he quit to go do something else, she cried.
We all had dinner together, and had a hard time deciding what to get for dinner, so we asked grandson to tell us what he wanted. Spaghetti and koolaide, Grandma, he decided about a half hour later. Since I didn't have anything in the house to make spaghetti, we decided we would all order from a local sitdown restaurant and my son would go pick it all up. Grandson ate just a little bit of his and said he was full. A few minutes later he was looking to see what the rest of us got and asking to have some of ours. We reminded him that he had his own and he said he was full. So he went back and ate some more. Then he said he didn't want anymore. Awhile later he said he didn't like spaghetti. I asked why not and he said "I don't like sauce on my spaghetti." Not sure how much he actually ate.
Now, if I can just get Grandson's sisters here, that would be a good thing. They don't get to come and stay with their dad except every other weekend for now and the weekends are just so busy for the family that they don't have the extra time to get all the things done they need to do and still have time to come see Grandma. Ahhh, but now I know the secret....FOOD! That is how I got them over here to begin with today, I think. I offered food. And in the end, the food was my son's treat! What a deal!