1. Chinese New Year - So on Chinese New Year (next year it's February 16) we do the traditional stuff: giving out red paper money, which is money in red envelopes, and two dinners.  The first dinner is to celebrate all the good things that happened in the old year.  The second dinner is to welcome the new year.  Usually my huge Chinese side of the family comes over and we all celebrate together, though it's definitely going to be different in 2018, though...

2. Weird Christmas stuff - So on Christmas Eve, my immediate family (Mom, dad) and I open gifts at midnight and go to bed at like 1:00.  The next day we wake up at like 10:00 and cook stuff to take to my grandparents' house.  We get there at least by noon.  This is when we all hang out and have fun doing whatever until 3:00ish, which is when we open presents.

3. New Years - On New Years Eve, my immediate family and I cook frozen food for dinner.  Yeah.  After that, we spend like 2 hours writing our last notes about the great things that happened the past year and put them in a really big jar (It's like 8 inches wide by 8 inches long by 8 inches deep).  At midnight, we sit around the jar and take turns reading out notes from it.

We kinda do the same thing for Thanksgiving, with the jar of notes! Except it's filled with post-it notes that everyone in my huge, immediate family wrote what they are thankful for on them. Then we take turns to read them aloud, and try to guess who wrote which one!

-For Thanksgiving (Which is tomorow!) we all wake up early to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in Minneapolis on Tv. They always have lots of floating balloons and bands and cheerleaders. Then we go over to my Grandma's house, and all of my aunts and uncle and cousins come over, and we all sit down for lunch (Which is getting more and more difficult as the years pass, because of how our family keeps expanding to drastically. The large table we sit at stretches all across the room!) Every one wears their "comfy pants" to lunch, then we all lay around and digest. This part usually takes several hours, because we gorge ourselves so much. Then, we have pie, which also involves another hour or two of digesting.

-For Christmas, we all wake up early, open preasants, and eat fruit pizza. Which, in it's self, is a traditions of sorts. Then we all head over to my Grandma's and it is baisically like Thanksgiving from all of the digestion and gorging, but while we are digesting, we open preasants. That part alone takes almost two hours. After preasant opening, all of us kids go outside and sled and build snow forts. (Which I really hope we can do, because so far, we have no snow!)

- New Year's Eve, we don't do a whole lot. We stalk up on ice cream the night before, and make five-scoop sundaes with chocolate, caramel sauce, and sprinkles. After that, we usually watch It's a Wonderful Life, or White Christmas, some of my favorite movies.

For the birthdays of my brother and I, instead of just giving us presents straight up the rest of the family will hide them around the house. My mom started doing it at first when we were younger kids but we kept doing it. This year, my brother and counsellor hid them for me at my music camp. A few months later when my brother was at college we sent some presents to his roommate to hide! Usually it's in pretty obvious spots, but one time I put one on my brother's bookshelf that he didn't notice for weeks! 

My dad, sister, and I always bake a TON of his special sugar cookies for Christmas (which are kind of his own recipe and taste amazing) and give them out to friends, family, neighbors, teachers, my bus driver, and more. It's always fun because we usually have a Christmas movie/Christmas music on in the kitchen when we do it, and it takes all day. We also have a tradition of painting two of the windows of our house- last year I did a giant star and my sis painted a pretty cool snowman. I might post pictures this year if I can.

For Thanksgiving we go around the table and talk about what we are thankful for. It's a family joke that my brother always says, "Uncle Matt's hair." Our uncle Matt is mostly bald. 

For Hannakah we have a white elephant, which is where everyone brings a gag gift and we take turns picking something we hope will turn out to be good. For as long as I can remember there's been this pair of dustmop slippers that keeps being regifted. Now, whoever gets the dustmop slippers is expected to bring them for the next year's white elephant. 

On Passover we always buy Jordan Almonds, which are these colorful, candy-coated almonds. At dessert we lick them and draw warpaint and lipstick on our faces! Once my non-Jewish cousin came over for the seder and he was so confused when he saw this particular custom. 

For Thanksgiving every year, my family and I all go to Massachusetts for the big celebration at my great-aunt and -uncle's house. There's a particular focus on the Greek in the family, with the annual spanakopita and Greek dancing. We always have a lot of turkey and pie, cranberry sauce and rolls, and these fruit boat things for centerpieces. I peel... de-seed... whatever-you-call-it the pomegranates the next day, and play Hestia when there's a fire in the fireplace. There are also bowls of nuts in the shell and nutcrackers out the whole time, which I make almost continuous use of.

Daily traditions: Using the yodeling pickles to call everyone to dinner, feeding the chickens/cats, me poking my twin in the chest because his sticks out right where mine has an indentation so he obviously stole it from me, substituting grunts for words, stuff about how my Mom is shorter than everyone but the cats...

Every Sunday we have ice cream, mostly because it's a pun. (Sunday, sundae... Yes, I know, and I am suitably ashamed. But it's a good enough excuse for ice cream.) 

When it is carb session around now my dad gets crabs and we eat a pastery. I forget what it's called, and after that we watched The Princess Bride. It's something we been doing for awhile now. So i think it's a tradition. 

For Thanksgiving we usually watch some of the Macy's parade at home, then we go to my aunt's house with my mom's side of the family. That's where we eat Thanksgiving dinner, (usually around 3 or 4:00) and lots of pie. We always make pumpkin pie, and this year me made pumpkin, apple, and chocolate cream pie. Then we drive 3 hours to the Berkshires to see my dad's side of the family, which is always awesome because we don't see them as much. My cousins, my brother and I like to have MarioKart tournaments.

For Christmas we have Christmas Eve either at our house or our cousins' house with my mom's side of the family. We have Christmas day at our house with just us, and then the rest of the day is mostly playing with/reading (in my case) our presents. The next day we drive out to the Berkshires again to spend he next few days with my dad's side of the family. We do a cousin gift exchange between me, my brother, and our other 7 cousins. /then there's a Yankee Swap for everyone. There's a blow up reindeer named Rudy that has been in it every single year since before I was born, and some unlucky person gets him every year. It used to be obvious which box he was in, but last year my cousin was really creative and hid him really well. After a few days, we drive up to New Hampshire to go skiing. 

We've spent New Year's Eve with our really good family friends every year for as long as I can remember, and ever since we've started skiing all winter long, they've come skiing with us for New Year's. It's so fun!