Category: Random

The Holiday Season & My Obsession with Tradition

Lauren12 Comments

When my sister’s boyfriend came to watch us cross the finish line of our half marathon, my mom warned him that “now that you’ve done this once, Lauren will consider it tradition and expect you to be at the finish line every year.”  Ha, I’ll be damned if that isn’t a frighteningly accurate summation of my life.

Look, I’m well aware that once I do something and love the outcome, I’m hell bent on repeating it year after year.  You know, to recreate the same level of predictable happiness that I attained the time before.  And there is no time that I’m more determined to be repetitive than during the holidays.  I can’t help it, it’s such a special time of the year and I’m deathly afraid of changing things up, for fear of disrupting my own vision of how things should be.  Plus the holidays totally cater to tradition, making it just that much easier to convince myself that things MUST be the same way they were last year.

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But the thing is, and I’m just sloooowly realizing it, is that things DON’T have to be the same to be good and changing things up just creates opportunity for NEW good experiences.  Take Thanksgiving for instance.  Every year, we run a Turkey Trot.  This year, we didn’t.  And can I tell you what a HUGE RELIEF it was to just have a calm relaxing morning at home, drinking coffee and watching the Macy’s Day Parade?  It’s like these holiday traditions are so ingrained in my head that I don’t even ask myself if I even really want to do them or not.

So even though I’m still hell bent on taking advantage of every single holiday moment, this year I’m really going to keep in mind that things do not need to be pre-determined.  Spur of the moment decisions are fun.  Changing it up is exciting.  And even if I end up missing some holiday tradition, there’s ALWAYS next year and the year after that and the year after that!

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Are you a creature of habit, especially this time of year?

Are there any holiday traditions you CAN’T go without?

Best of July

LaurenLeave a comment

Serious question.

WHERE DID JULY GO?!

I guess it was probably swept up in birthday celebrations, BBQs, cabin adventures, family fun and seriously more dessert than I probably ever need to eat again.  This month has been such a whirlwind of pure summer fun.  It’s my favoritest month of the year for that reason, but really, does it always have to go by so fast?  One minute it’s the 4th of July, the next, it’s the last day of the month.  Wah wah.  I guess the only thing left to do is relive the fun one last time with a little “Best of July” recap!

The month started off with a low key 4th of July — if you can call an all day bike ride “low key” — that once again reaffirmed my belief that the best things in life are free unplanned.  Spur of the moment backyard movie nights need to happen more often!

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After all that low key-ness, it was time to celebrate my birthday for.ev.er!  Or so it felt 🙂  Many wonderfully thoughtful gifts, delicious dinners (REMEMBER THAT PIZZA?!), self-pampering and an overall showering of love was almost more than my heart (and stomach) could handle.  Almost.

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The first Mother-Daughter Book Club meeting was a smashing success, complete with passionate book talk — um a group of ladies talking literature gives me all the feels — and an outdoor breakfast to go along with it.  Naturally 🙂

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Months of excitement and planning culminated in our “First Annual Mountain Trip” to Breckenridge!  We got drenched on our hike, the boys all sucked at starting a fire, the girls couldn’t win a game of Catchphrase to save our lives and we broke the dishwasher.  But it was all PERFECT!

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And because July always saves the best for last, the month ended with a birthday celebration for the ages; my mom’s 60th!  My NOLA family made a surprise — well it was a surprise to my mom, at least — visit and for three blissful days we lived it up Colorado-style, with a Pearl Street dinner, Chautauqua picnic, family putt putt competition, hawk sighting at the Denver Botanic Gardens and the general soaking up of family togetherness.  My perfect mother deserved such a perfect birthday weekend 🙂

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Seriously though, it has been so hard readjusting to “normal life” this week.  Like wait, I don’t get to see my family every day?  That, coupled with the trade of my favorite Rockies player, has been making me all sorts of sad.  Someone hold me.

Of course, I would be remiss not to mention all the little things — because let’s be real, the little things matter just as much as the big things — that made July feel like eternal summertime.  We saw Wicked, my sister and I finished watching True Detective, Joey and I started half marathon training and I finally got my little hands on our wedding album.

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Oh and honorable mention goes to my porch swing which I have decided has an impenetrable force field of tranquility around it.  Sitting in that thing is magical.

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Today is sort of bittersweet because I hate seeing July come to an end — the feeling that summer is slipping away gives me serious anxiety! — but I’m also kind of looking forward to August.  August is summer’s last hurrah.  It’s less busy than July, which means there’s plenty of time — and summery weather — to do all the fun things I still want to do.  I’m so excited for that!

Happy Friday!