Family Tradition

As my husband and I get older we more and more see the value and importance of having tradition. I have to say he and I have really rather carved our path over the ears from choosing to get married without family support when I was 18 to 14 years later, choosing to not have a holiday tree this year. We often do our own thing. Some things though we stick to, and one of those traditions I am going to post about now.

 Strings of Love

On a birthday we run string, a soft yarn normally, around the house, and sometimes outside as well. Along the way we leave notes, instructions, memories of the person. For the younger kids, we tend to just do the string though and we tend to make it… complicated. The kids get so excited that they can find even simple paths hard to follow, though this does not diminish the fun, it just gets more people involved in it. The purpose? To add more fun to the old tradition of gift giving. Rather than a pile of presents to open, it is a hunt. My children when given the choice, rather do this than have a big party even.

This photo has our now 7 year old son following a blue string. His 5 year old sister was following the red.

Can you see two of the gifts?

I circled them in the second photo, two pink little gifts stashed away for our little girl.

You might also notice our teenage daughter with our sons new Helicopter toy. While he went to find another gift, she took that one out to charge it. With two children opening gifts, we would have them each find their next one and come sit down to wait to open it till their sibling found their next one to open as well. It’s a controlled chaos of sorts.

   Set Up

Be sure to give yourself about 30 minutes to run string. Have string go from one room to another, double backing on it self at times, and getting rather complicated. Expect to use a lot of tape as well. A 34 year old friend of ours helped this year and even with her being in the military, she called this one heck of a work out. The work out doesn’t stop after you have managed to get all the string up either, if you have to live in this for a while, it gets interesting stepping over and bending under all the string. This can work for a Party, hiding the party gifts along the string, it gives Mom time to write down notes on the gift and who gave the gift for thank you cards and this is helpful. However not all adults might find it entertaining trying to move at all in a house set up like this for very long and with many kids running around the chances that strings will get pulled down is high!

  Clean Up

One of the things we have not done yet is have a child wind a ball of the yarn as they go, this would help them not lose their place but would also slow them down. I am not sure my little ones would enjoy slowed down. Often we have an adult or older child bring all the strong down and trash the tape after the event. The yarn can be saved for another year or recycled into a project.

All in all, this is a tradition we can’t do without, the kids simply will not let us and as other friends and families experience it with us, they seem to get stuck with it as well. It is just such fun and for the price, why say no?