Destroying A Gingerbread Village...A Taylor Family Tradition

A few days before Christmas I watched my kids participate in a Taylor Family Tradition. It's evolved over the past couple of years. We started building a gingerbread house for Christmas. The problem was, due to food sensitivities, we could never eat it--not that they look that appetizing, anyway.

So, what do to with it?

Why not blow it up?

Hence, a Taylor Family Tradition was born.

Both my wife and I brought traditions from our childhood into our marriage. And when the kids came along, we implemented more. And now, as the kids have gotten older, they'll expect to do things like building structures made of food and then using fireworks to destroy said buildings.

Will they continue this particular tradition with their new families? I sure hope so. And, of course, they'll discover new things they want to do, that will hopefully be carried on with their families. That's how traditions work.

The fireworks we bought--and we were hampered by the lack of selection--worked okay. They did not destroy the structures, just cooked them more. We used a fountain firework. Had we used aerials, they would have destroyed the little buildings, and perhaps some of the neighbor's landscaping as well. No, we wouldn't attempt that. Fountains are good--maybe next time we can have a couple of fountains pointed at the little town. We'll have to see. We're always trying to improve the process.

This little tradition has been fun for our family. It takes a few weeks to fully complete, which adds to the fun. The family looks forward to the building and to the destroying--just like a good family tradition should be.

Spending New Years Day...At The Movies

Going to the movies is something neither me or my family does very often. In fact, it's possible the last movie I saw in the theater was in 2017. My son and I went to Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi and we might have seen it before it hit 2018. 

I know people say, "you MUST see this movie (or that movie, or the other movie...) in the theater with the great speakers and huge screen!" I usually ignore this. Movies in theaters are just something we've eliminated from our budget--it's just too much money to go see films all the time. And if you limit in-theater experiences for only the best movies, you're constantly judging which movies are worth it. Eventually, it's just easier to not go see films in the theater and just wait for them to show up at RedBox.

But, the kids wanted to go see a movie on New Years Day. We got a gift card for the local movieplex for Christmas so we decided to take the kids and do something special. The film they wanted to watch? Spider-Man in the Spider Verse. We'd heard great things about the film. The people who said those things did not lie. It was awesome!

Yesterday I spent time with some film people--people who make a living being connected to pop culture. They talked about the great films that came out in 2018. I saw some of them, just a little later than most. It's okay to wait...it makes the really good films that much better.