Since the month of October is one of my favorite times of year for getting outdoors, we tend to incorporate that into our Halloween festivities.  I’m not into the blood and gore of Halloween, so we try to focus on other aspects… the spiders, owls, bats, and pumpkins, along with some fall colors and crisp cool air-appreciation.

A few traditions we have enjoyed:

Halloween bike ride
After it gets dark, throw on a jacket, strap on a headlamp, and take a bike ride around the neighborhood to check out decorated Halloween houses.

Halloween tree hunting
Much like Christmas tree hunting, we use this as a good excuse to get out in the woods. We search for the perfect “spooky branch” to decorate. Note: This branch can later be recycled for a Thanksgiving thankfulness tree.

Night hike
There is always a full moon sometime around Halloween, this year it’s even really close! October 29th is the ‘Hunters Moon‘. This makes for a great night to take a Halloween hike. Look for critters out after dark. You could even take a hike in your costumes for added awesomeness.

Outdoor Halloween Party
Last year we were fortunate enough to accompany some friends on their traditional Halloween camp-out at the beach in central California. All the kids brought their costumes and participated in Halloween party, camping style. Bobbing for apples in the wash basin, doughnuts hanging from stings on the tent trailer awning and hunting for pirate treasure buried in beach sand.

Destination Trick-or-Treating
Since October is a great month to travel, consider a family vacation around this time of year. We’re rarely home for Halloween and have enjoyed trick-or-treating in some small out of the way desert towns.

Pumpkin picking
A trip to the pumpkin patch is always in order. We take the kids out and let them pick their own pumpkin to take home and carve up.  Its a half-day outing that usually includes exploring the tractors at the farm and some caramel apples.  Good times.

And of course, don’t forget these nature themed do-it-yourself costumes. I tried this year, but was vetoed in favor of Spiderman and a Clone Trooper. You can’t win em all!

Happy Halloween season!

If you have an outdoor tradition, please share!

The first Easter that I clearly remember involved a basket, some plasticky green fluff, a bunch of chocolate, a candy shaped like the easter bunny, and a book about kittens.  All in a park.

The best Easter I remember involved a car, 15 or so puzzling clues, a compass, a few 7.5 minute maps and a highway map, binoculars, a bottle of water, some plastic eggs, and a picnic in the desert.  Best.  Easter.  Ever.

So fun we did it the next year.  And the next.  It became a tradition. The day before Easter, my mom and dad would drive all around northern Utah leaving plastic eggs hidden in interesting and obscure places.  Three or so eggs at each place, replete with chocolates and jelly beans, and one egg with a ‘clue’ to the next location where eggs and candy could be found.    They’d give us a clue to start with, follow us around for the first few, and then leave us on our own for the last ones.  The last clue would lead us to a place known only to them.  When we’d arrive, exhausted and excited from our morning of treasure-finding, they’d be waiting there with an extravagant picnic lunch.

One year went something like this:

Clue 1: Lq wkh Edfnbdug.  (A little letter-shifting code for:  In the Backyard.)

Clue 2: Look In Between the Ridges of the Arch to Reap Your reward.  (i.e.:  Look In Between the Ridges of the Arch to Reap Your reward; i.e.: LIBRARY).

Clue 3: Drive three blocks east from here.  Turn north.  Drive one block.  Turn north again.  Drive 3.2 miles.  Turn east.  Drive 1 mile.  Flip a u-eey.  Drive 2.6 miles.  Park on the west side.  Commence searching. (more…)

I love traditions.  I love the anticipation.  Knowing what’s going to happen next.  Sharing something with friends and family.  Having an activity that is unique to us.  It makes me proud.  Happy.  It makes me want to hug the world.  My family has always been big on traditions, though we never said as much out loud.  But our traditions were never… shall we say… normal.  They weren’t the same traditions everybody else had.

At Christmas time, our neighbors placed blow up reindeer in their front yards, they set waving cardboard Santas near their smokeless chimneys, and they put out enough lights to make our street look like an air force landing strip.  Our house looked like a black hole in comparison.  My sister and I yearned to decorate something. My mother had a pitiful looking Norwegian Pine; I think it wanted to die but my mom intervened just regularly enough to keep it living, but sorrowful.  The poor thing never grew to more than three feet tall and frequently struggled just to maintain a sense of Tree.  It was often more brown than green.  Since an entire strand of lights wouldn’t fit on the miserable thing, we wrapped them around the banister separating the living room from the stairs to the basement instead. We also hung a few colorful ornaments from the prongs on the antelope head that hangs between the living room windows.  The colorful glass globes would reflect in his black plastic eyeballs, giving their normally stoic glare a bit of holiday cheer.  Christmas eve we would turn off the lights, lay on the living room floor, and have intimate conversations with each other while staring at the blinking light patterns on the living room ceiling, and in the eyeballs of the antelope.

It took me a long time to figure out that nobody’s traditions are normal.  If we all did the same thing, it would violate the my sacred definition of Tradition.  I can’t find a good definition of tradition.  Some take it very seriously, and if it isn’t passed down across hundreds of generations and replete with symbolic gestures, phrases, and trinkets, then it doesn’t count… kind of like this.  To me a tradition needs only three things: (more…)