Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 240 | Weirdest Family Traditions

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

Today’s episode had us laughing and that’s because we asked you all to send in your WEIRDEST family traditions and you did not disappoint! We had so much fun reading through these really odd but fun traditions and it made us want to implement more funny traditions into our own family! Thank you to everyone who sent questions in :)  Love you guys, Shawn & Andrew Subscribe to our newsletter  ▶ https://www.familymade.com/newsletter Follow our podcast Instagram  ▶ https://www.instagram.com/shawnandandrewpods/ Follow My Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnjohnson Shop My LTK Page ▶ https://www.shopltk.com/explore/shawnjohnson  Like the Facebook page! ▶ https://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow Andrew’s Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Andrew’s Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewdeast?lang=en Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. what's up everybody welcome back to a couple things with Sean and Andrew today we're going to have a lot of fun and it's going to be slightly embarrassing probably mostly for me okay maybe for some of those listening okay we're going to be talking about the weirdest family traditions okay I'll tell

you why I thought of this okay but first we're going to go to the reviews and give some shout out because emma kate falkenbach says that this podcast has been a source of peace and inspiration to me this podcast has helped me cultivate a positive relationship with my husband and my favorite episodes in general have been the episodes that dove deep into what it's like to love each other well and communicate effectively in your marriage that makes me feel good about this show i'm not saying we like are profound on this show but i do like how we put some thought into how we navigate our relationship. I will say that means a lot

because every once in a while I find myself having like an existential crisis where I'm like, what are we doing? What are we doing? Why are people even listening to this? What are we talking about? Everybody has a podcast.

Why do we have a podcast too? But then I'm like, you know what? I love you and I love our marriage and I love marriage and I love couples and I love relationships. And I think it's just kind of become us exposing our relationship

to the world and our hot. takes on it and I think that's fine but it's a it's a filtered and thoughtful yeah we're not spewing all of our things so thank you and honestly we've gotten so much better as a result of this show we have so and then we have someone like deborah who says sometimes I feel like the way you both look at each other and laugh the show ends and then you go back into the room and spar is what she says there have been In many episodes where, yeah, we've wanted to get at each other's throats. But we try not to record. Actually, we don't record because it just wouldn't work if we're upset at each other.

Except for that one that we did while we were in an argument intentionally to record that. Remember? Which one? I don't remember. I guess Sean's mad more often than I thought. Anyway, what? What does that mean? literally one episode that we've ever done.

I guess Sean's more mad than I thought. Well, you said which one? There's literally it only in one time. I don't remember ever recording one where we were like really in an argument. It was called How We Are You or something like that. Oh my gosh. But it was literally like I budget it. You know, cut me, bro?

You know what video I want to film with you? What? is just sharing each other's gripes while we're touching noses. Let me do it like an example. I saw this. Why do you always... Why does your breast smell? Why do you always empty the LaCroix cans and then put them in the sink instead of the trash cream?

Your breath smells bad. It's like brownies. I haven't eaten much it. That's what makes your breath smell bad? Let's talk more about my bad, bad breath. Thank you. Thank you. All right, why are we talking about weird family traditions?

Well, we just had Thanksgiving. Yep. We have Christmas right around the corner. A lot of family traditions happening this time of year. Oh, yeah. And we do one. You share. What?

Are we our family Thanksgiving tradition? The one? For Thanksgiving. How many do we have? I'm curious where you're about to say now. I was just thinking about family traditions. And this is, this was like your idea of a script. And so I'm like just getting into it.

I'm like, my brain's going wild. Yeah. I think you should share it because it's beautifully spoken the way you share how it originated. So have a Thanksgiving. My family, no matter where we're at, we have brothers that live in California. We live in Nashville, Indiana. We'll all in our group chat share pictures of us laying down in a street. And the game is kind of find the largest street you can to lay down in.

The thought and the reason it started is that on Thanksgiving, everyone has, already traveled. They're already at their end destination. So the roads are quiet especially like before 8 a.m. And you could lay down on a highway because there's so few cars. So back when I was like 10, my dad started doing this. He was just like giggly about

how quiet the highways were. And so he was like, we could lay down on the road. And so next thing you know, we did. And now we do that every year. We call it street laying. Street laying. And the newest members of our family, like Sean or my sisters-in-laws

are a bit uneasy about it. It takes a while to get bought in on it. I'm bought in now. We do it. But it's kind of part of the family culture, which I think is why weird family traditions are important. It's like street laying is kind of what makes east east. You know what I'm saying? And everybody has that thing.

And if you don't, you should start something weird, to be honest. Because it's kind of fun. It's like the quirky little weird things that you do together as a family. is what kind of makes a whole experience fun. And I will say this. I feel like, especially as being someone who married into your family, the outlaws is what we call ourselves, at the time, like when I started dating you,

and like when I started going to holidays and early on in marriage, it almost never made sense to me. And I would kind of fight it sometimes. I'd be like, why are we doing this? it's like negative 15 degrees. We have an infant now. You're wanting to do this in the interstiff. Whatever.

But we did it every single year. And it almost was like, just like a flip switched. The year after dad died, it's like every single person woke up on Thanksgiving and we were like, we have to street lay. Yeah. And I don't know how to articulate, like, the meeting behind that

or if that's profound at all, but it's almost, it does symbolize traditions, a unity within your family that takes intention to, like, create. But once you're doing it, it is more meaningful than you realize. And I don't think I realized to that

until dad was gone. Of like, this is something that truly unifies our family in a beautiful way. Yeah, because the, so it just starts off for whatever reason, like start off because my dad had this thought. And then you do it.

it and then you keep on doing it and the more you do it the more meaning it has and then the more meaning it has the more identity your family has with it right and now you know when there's a new member to the family it's like yeah this is just what we do you know and it's like that is what makes the family identity and there is something so special about it depends on the year we kind of alternate years where like families who live in california or nashville or wherever um we'll do like a year where everyone's doing Thanksgiving in their respective cities, town, states,

and then the next year everyone's in Indiana. And there's something so cool about even when we aren't together on Thanksgiving, seeing the family group chat be flooded with pictures of people laying in the streets

all over the country is really fun. It's hilarious. I think it's hilarious. And people get called out. It's like, where's your picture? What are you doing?

And it just makes you feel like such a family unit. Yeah. And I love that. And we have a couple fun ones. Actually I think I was asked and we shared this in a newsletter what our Christmas family traditions are

and I surprisingly had like a long list that I was able to pull together I texted it to the whole group the family chat but one of them is like when we were kids you wake up so excited that it's Christmas morning and our parents would always make us wait in their room so that they could get things

ready whatever that meant before we came out so we'd all run in the room with matching PJs and my mom got us which we still do to this day and we laid on their bed. And so now we have all these in-laws. No. Now this is, this is a line that was crossed. People are trying to push against it, but it's a family tradition. No. But I think it is fun because, you know, whether you're going on a first date and you're meeting someone new or it's a new friend or you're at like a work party and you're small talking, family traditions is like a fun thing

to talk about. You know what I'm saying? This morning we had a work breakfast and everyone's kind of sharing their family traditions and it's like you really find something out about the people it's like the corkiness it's like oh why would you lay on the street it's like well let me tell you about my dad he was like this funny guy always had early morning you know and it like unlocks a lot of these derivative stories so it might be worth like if you if you can't identify if you're listening you can't identify what your family traditions are sit down with your parents or siblings and and i guarantee you that if you have a five-minute conversation with them about hey what are some of the things that our family does that nobody else does it's like you do something quirky

whether it be eat a certain meal every year or sally did that thanks uh the thanksgiving turkey feathers i love that one of our one of our friends cuts out the shape of a turkey without the feathers um out of you know cardboard or paper or whatever and then during every thanksgiving dinner no matter who is there you have to write things that you're thankful for on each individual feather and then you keep filling it until the turkey's

full and it was so sweet and precious. It was such a great idea. Yeah and the options are endless for what your family traditions could be but identifying them and writing them down or like at least having a conversation

with the people in your family about them actually does have an effect of bringing awareness to it and then and then like there's a certain excitement or like a sense of humor about it almost where you're like oh yeah that is kind of weird and then you kind of want to do it more because it's like a bonding thing you know i will never forget the first year us outlaws i was still a dating outlaw by then um went running following our boyfriends and husbands into your parents bedroom where your mom and dad were still in bed and us outlaws were just standing at the foot of the bed like ain't no way

I'm jumping into bed with my boyfriend's parents Well originally it's just like seven people Which was a lot Because there's five kids And then it's grown quickly It got weird

Me being in bed with your mom and dad Anyway so all right We asked Social media To share your family traditions Weird or not And the results came back With a wide range

So some are simple They're like simple everyday practices to elaborate annual celebrations. Some are more kind of quirky. But I do feel like these activities that you have shared that we're talking about are really more than just customs. There are actually opportunities for families to bond, share values through, and create memories together. I will also say when it comes to traditions, even if you don't have any, sit down and

start writing some out. and it can be so simple. But we've already noticed with our five-year-old and our three-year-old how much traditions mean to them. Drew at five, so one of the traditions in the East family is we ride this train in Indiana every Christmas.

At a hardware store. It's at a hardware store, but it's the coolest thing ever. But even in like March of a given year, she'll be like, I can't wait for the Christmas train. and in her mind there are so many core memories and values around that

and she knows that the train she's going to get to see her cousins and her nana and like it means a lot to kids and it gives them things to hold on to that I think are very very valuable yeah okay something else

there's research behind this it says for children family traditions offer stability in a constantly changing world and knowing the birthday's walls be celebrated in a certain way that the holidays or that the holidays mean a certain ritual takes place actually gives the kid a sense of predictability and safety which is kind of interesting it also says the consistency helps foster emotional

security which is crucial in early childhood development family traditions also help with building a sense of identity and strengthening family bonds dude it's like I mean it's what it's about it's so easy to gloss over and I don't it's hard to grasp the side effects of having a sense of identity but like we went to this wedding this weekend and they're up there

with their parents at the altar talking about stories of their grandparents their great grandparents and it's like that family has such a strong sense of identity. They know who they are and what they stand for. Yeah it's almost like a fast forward button in life

maybe is the effect that it has where it's like oh I don't need to reinvent the wheel of of who I am and what I'm here for. It's like, my grandpa did this, my dad did this, I'm an extension of this. Anyway, it's pretty deep. So a challenge for you,

if you don't have any family traditions or didn't grow up doing any, that is totally fine. It's a great time to start something new and we'd love for you to try out a new holiday tradition this season and then report back to us how it goes. That'd be really fun.

So make up something weird and do it. Also, we're going to go through a bunch of these that you guys submitted. This will be a clear indication that you can come up with anything. Traditions don't have to be like cliche and romantic or cute or whatever. They can truly just be odd.

And I actually think the weirder, the better because kids get such a kick out of it. Yeah, I think an element of unexpectedness and an element of togetherness are the two things that when I think of our family traditions are identified. You know what I'm saying? I just read a couple of these.

These are great. I'm excited. All right, so let us know in the comments which tradition you think is the absolute weirdest. But without further ado, let's roll into these. We have 35, so maybe we'll do a part one, part two. But let's get started. Megan.

Ooh, should we say the full names? No. Okay, just say the first name. Sorry, Megan. This one is Megan. She says the Easter Bunny brings everyone cereal for Christmas in my house. Hilarious. Hilarious.

I'm trying to think. But I like the crossover. Yeah, kind of a shout out to the other holiday. I like it. Very random, very random. I love that. Yeah. I've never heard of anybody cross-pollinating.

I like it a lot. It's like the leprechaun just snuck in there, too. Oh, thank you for submitting that, Megan. All right, Nancy says that every year my grandpa would present a golden spray painted stick to the person that caused the most drama and issues throughout the year. Everyone was terrified to be the one that received it. He even tied a big red bow on it. Since he passed away, we no longer do it, but the stick still sits at my grandma's house

as a reminder of Christmases with him. That's comical. That is pretty great. So whoever caused the most drama and ish, got the golden spray-painted stick. That's funny. What a great way to process through difficult times. You know, you know it's coming to you this year.

Put it all out there. Everyone can laugh about it. Celebrate it with a weird trinket. Kendra says, instead of Christmas cards, We do 4th of July cards. I like it. Very random. I love that.

I love it. But my question is, do you send 4th of July cards on Christmas? This episode is brought to you by Defender. With its 626 horsepower twin-turbo V8 engine, the Defender Octa is taking on the Dakar Rally. The ultimate off-road challenge. Learn more at landrover.ca. new scrambled egg loaded croissant or is it croissant no matter how you say it start your day with

freshly cracked scrambled eggs loaded on a buttery flaky croissant try it with maple brown butter today at tim's at participating restaurants in canada for limited time no or are they sending cards on the fourth of july also i want one kindred so please send it to us i'm excited tash says that my mom's family is huge and at christmas whoever has a new boyfriend girlfriend must have them stand on their chair and state their intentions while we all cheer them on and ask questions. We're also loud,

so this is usually boisterous and fun. I love it. I love this. State your intentions. Wait, can I just say something? Okay, so something that I love so much about Andrew's family is like, we are a unit.

And any boyfriends or girlfriends coming into the family, it means business. It's not like you choose who you choose. No, the family, has I don't want to say like a say in it but we are such a close-knit family that they have to fit in

with our family. Yeah it's almost like you know they're the popular vote and then the actual person who's dating them is kind of like the electoral college so there's some consideration there. But I actually love this because it's you're getting such a clear vision and insight

into what the family's like I think it's great. Yeah it's great. Susie Oh yeah go ahead Susie. Quit black I'm passing these people. Susie says. After my dad passed, we needed a new tradition.

We decided to have themed Christmases, including food and costumes in theme. We've had tacky garage sale Christmas, Jimmy Buffett Christmas, Cowboy Christmas, Carnivore Christmas. What? Tex-Mex Christmas, complete with a pinata, and Christmas by the sea, with surf and turf and ocean creature costumes. Just to name a few. This year's theme is probably my favorite, Snoop and Martha. I love it. But food has to be something from one of their cookbooks.

It's pretty strange, but also so much fun. Everyone from my 96-year-old grandfather to my seven-year-old daughter participate. I'm just going to say this. This might be one of my favorite episodes we've ever done so far. This is cool. I am really enjoying this. I love that. And I'm also inspired.

I'm like, dude. I had this thought at the wedding this weekend. It was like a costume. There was a dress theme. Yeah. Unique. So it was like all white for the rehearsal dinner, all black for the wedding. and Sean and I were leaving the hotel room dressed up and it's like

there are phases of life where you're busy with whatever and you don't want to spend time on making whatever costume you don't want to spend time on carnivore Christmas or putting thought into that right or trying to find an all white suit but it's like it's almost a gauge of it's so much fun you know what I'm saying it is so much fun and it's important too so I'm glad we had the opportunity to do that and

and speaking of this wedding to see like the all white and then the all black and like the extremes of the wedding to see 400 people fly across the world to this wedding and be so bought in was so inspirational as like a family unit. Yeah. I was like this is incredible.

Shout out Nicole and Greg. Yeah. All right. Marsha says that we have a contest to see who can gain the most weight on Thanksgiving. Way in before. and after. Winter gets to wear the turkey cape for a year. Wow, that's great. That is interesting. I dig it. Coming from a family who runs a turkey trot, I don't think that's our vibe, but I like it.

I think there would be pushback from our family in that, but more power to you. Jessica says this isn't a holiday tradition, but my sister, dad, and I would put our hands in a huddle like they did in the show, love and marriage, and yell our last name every night before bed. Whoa. You just said their last name again. She wrote it. Whoa, Johnson's. That's great. I dig it. Bethany says, my husband's family makes an annual six-foot sandwich. That's sick.

There's a board that everyone signs every year. The men and boys make the sandwich on the board. And then we saran wrap it and carried around the house while singing a made-up song. Ding, ding, dong, six feet long. It's our Christmas song. Join our throng. Name of someone carrying the sandwich. I love it. Come and sing along.

Hey, we keep singing the song until we've gone through everyone's names. That's our Christmas Eve dinner and it's everyone's favorite tradition. Wow. What? That is absolutely ridiculous and amazing. Let me sing the song. Ding, ding, dong, six feet long. It's our Christmas song.

Join our throng. Sean, come and sing along. Hey! What? I like it. I like it. Taylor says, growing up, we would always host Thanksgiving at our house. There are six of us kids

so my dad would grab a football, take us to Dunkin' Donuts, and then park at the rest stop to play and eat donuts so that my mom could clean the house and do Thanksgiving prep. Over 30 years later, we still meet my dad

at the rest stop for donuts, the morning of Thanksgiving. That makes me want to cry a little bit for some reason. Dang. For some reason? The food one, the six feet long sandwich, we recently started this

tradition of doing smash burgers on Christmas Eve. Yeah. Where we'll do my brothers and I are the chefs. It's the best. Steak and Shake is like a place in Indiana, maybe the whole Midwest,

but they make these delicious burgers. And so we'll get the hats on and everything, wear aprons, and we have this whole assembly line of, it's a blast. It's so much fun. All right, next. Anna says,

we hide baby Jesus from the nativity scene until he's born on Christmas. We wear yellow underwear on New Year's Eve, and we roll suitcases around on New Year's Day to bring travel in the new year. Funny. Interesting. Funny.

Rihanna says every Halloween, my husband's family orders hundreds of chicken wings, and it's a competition who can eat the most wings. There's no prize or incentive at all. I think it's just an excuse to eat a ton of wings. Fantastic. That's so good. There are so many. This is amazing.

Stephanie says, when we have summer vacations, my family has an annual banana toss competition. Apparently several years ago, my mother-in-law accidentally bought 10 bundles of bananas, and my in-laws didn't want to waste them so they had a banana toss competition. Now they go all out with custom 24 banana toss champion medals for the winner and everything. The old banana toss.

Wait, what is a banana toss though? How do you win? I don't know. I'm curious. Does it have like the peel on it or not? Is it like an egg toss where as long as it doesn't pop open? Maybe if it like doesn't, I don't know. Make your own rules. Go for.

Lori says, I dated a guy whose whole family would meet and visit an elderly, relatives grave at the cemetery every year they took multiple group family photos around the grave and then would play games like grave and seek who could find the oldest grave newest grave strangest name etc while being timed I kept thinking I just kept thinking I was being punked then they would eat pizza and leave it's like a graveyards to me aren't I don't like enjoy spending time there but I kind of appreciate I'm in this group it's like men's group with a bunch of fun people and they're big on writing your eulogy and thinking about your death which kind of builds

an appreciation for a day of the day like the adenos and um kind of Latin America countries this maybe has that effect but I don't need to freaking psychoanalyze this I was going to say yeah we can keep moving yeah great all right Kaylee says every fourth of July my family explodes a watermelon using only only rubber bands we put multiple rubber bands around the middle of the watermelon until the pressure built up so much it explodes. This started back in 2012 when it was just the trendy thing to do, and we had so much fun and became a tradition. Love it. That's great. Anonymous says every year in the fall when the garden is done, we chuck rotten tomatoes and cucumbers at each other outside, of course. This Thanksgiving, my 82-year-old mother started a

food fight in the kitchen and it quickly escalated. Cool whip cake, sprinkles, applesauce, mashed potatoes flung through the air. A Thanksgiving to remember. Wow. Summer's here, and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with Uber Eats. What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a well-groom lawn delivered, but you can get a chicken parmesan delivered. A cabana? That's a no, but a banana, that's a yes. A nice tan, sorry, nope. But a box fan, happily yes.

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I like that one. Carrie says every time someone is sick in my family, we gift them Miss Grass Chicken noodle soup, Sprite, medicine, and a pair of sick socks. Six socks are the weird part, but even as adults, my kids expected. It's just new fuzzy socks and make your feet toasty while everything else hurts or is cold. Thoughtful. That's thoughtful. Lisa says my family opens all of our Christmas gifts at the same exact time.

That's us. That's chaos. It's great. Lauren says, My husband's family has always had salmon for breakfast on birthdays and holidays. Why? I'm not sure. No one has ever seemed to be able to give me an answer as to why, but it's tradition.

I do like the salmon, though, so it works even if I don't understand it. Interesting. That's great. Every birthday and holiday. That's great. Mariah says we do Christmas at my grandparents, 150-year-old house with 18 people in their house only has one bathtub. So we play basketball every Christmas Eve at the rec center so that we can use the rec center showers. Wow.

Sarah says we hide a pickle ornament in the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. The first kid to find it in the morning gets an extra gift. The extra gift is always a family gift, like an experience, a movie gift card, a staycation, et cetera. It's become a family favorite. Love this. Wait, wait. They said several people said this.

Wait, what? Hiding a pickle ornament? No, maybe it's just like you hide an ornament. Is it specifically a pickle ornament that people do? No way. Several people said this. The extra gift is great. I like that.

Allie, my grandmother makes the best spaghetti, but we cannot eat it without our famous. tradition of making it into spaghetti sandwiches. Talk to me. We use white sunbeam bread, spread butter on one slice of bread, put spaghetti noodles and sauce on the bread,

and fold a slice in half. It makes the fancy Italian meal very casual and American, but we love it. I want to try that out right now. Funny. I'm in. I feel like I want to pull some of these traditions into our calendar. You know? Chelsea says

we buy an inappropriate book like Barbara Beaver needs a trim. What is that? Just finish reading it. You're going to die. Just finish reading it. Oh, my gosh. Oh, Chelsea.

Thank you for this. Okay, we buy an inappropriate book like Barbara's Beaver needs a trim. And we may... I want to cry. We make the newest addition to the family read it at Christmas, like a cousin singing... Like a cousin's significant other new boyfriend, et cetera. It's hilarious.

Oh, my gosh. I'm literally tearing up. That is quite the way to. I read that without digesting the words as they were coming out of my mouth. Oh my gosh. This is ridiculous. What's fun about this is like, as I'm reading, I'm like, I like that. I'm going to take that, but adjust this.

And I'm like thinking how I could tweak it so that our family would love it. But, anyway. Megan says, instead of Thanksgiving foods, we eat traditional Mediterranean and honor of foods Jesus would have had. We used to do this closer to Christmas, but with growing families, we have replaced it with Thanksgiving. We try to limit electricity and also eat on the floor. Oh, interesting. I bet there's backstory to that. Huh.

Interesting. I like it. Just limit electricity. I dig it. Ruth, our family always eats Christmas Eve dinner together at Pizza Hut. My grandfather chose it in the 70s when my grandmother didn't want to cook on Christmas Eve one year, and we've done it ever since, even after he passed. This reminds me of, so last year, we had just had Bear, our third baby, so we couldn't

travel for Christmas. And we went to Habachi on Christmas Eve, and it was packed. And I remember asking our waitress, like, is this normal? And she said, Christmas Eve is their busiest day of the entire year. yeah which goes to show like tradition people probably do that every year man i love habachi are we gonna do that again you think no because we'll be an indie oh yeah oh no we won't oh merry to barrage we got the tradition out of the books baby i mean i love it uh Olivia says we do a fondue family dinner for valentine's day wow that's sweet that's kind of tough to do

isn't it fondue is not that is not easy you have to heat the oil and then or chocolate or cheese or no if it's a whole family dinner though you gotta cook the chicken we don't know what's that chain fondue restaurant you know what I'm talking about I don't think I've ever been there

date night great okay Anonymous says we save up our money and then pick a family in need and doorbell ditch the gift of cash and then hide to watch them get it I dig it love that

Rachel my family gifts around an old enema bag that was my grandmother's? No. They found it after she passed away and started wrapping it up for each other at Christmas. Whenever you got a gift at Christmas

that didn't say who it was from, you would wonder if it was the bag. Later on, they found a grant aunt's thong tag still on and now they gift that too. That is gross. Wow. Okay.

Amy says, my family eats pie for lunch on Thanksgiving. My mom always felt like after dinner, you are two full. to eat all the pie flavors you want, so she came up with this tradition. Each year, we do about six to nine flavors of pie. What?

What? Yummy. Yummy. So it's only pie. No turkey. That's it. Okay. Amy has another one.

Okay. For birthdays, my family does this saying before every gift is given where we hold the gift over the birthday person's head and say a chant. Then bonk them with it or hand them the gift. The chant is,

Heavy, heavy hangs over your poor head. What are you going to do with it? Then the birthday person says that they think, what they think they will do with the gift. Eat it, throw it, feed it to the dog, et cetera. If they guess right, the gift gets handed to them. If not, they get bonked before the gift gets handed to them. My mom came up with a lot of weird traditions

to keep things fun and interesting. Funny. Huh. I like the guessing aspect of it. Stephanie says, we eat cinnamon rolls with gravy on Christmas morning. Don't knock until you try it. Perfect sweet and savory mix.

Also growing up, we always went to the zoo on Christmas Eve. Cinnamon rolls with gravy. I think cinnamon rolls. Oh, the monkey bread for us. Yeah. I did monkey bread for breakfast on Christmas Day every year of my life. Aaron, my dad always had us celebrate Groundhog Day. He would bring us a special lunch at school and go visit Woodstock, Illinois, where the movie Groundhog Day was filmed.

That's cool. Wow. Brittany, we don't use any kind of silverware plates on Christmas Day. We just get some disposable tablecloth cloths and throw everything on there. The kids love it and very little cleanup for mom. What? I want to do it. I think that's a fantastic idea.

That sounds cool, but I'm thinking like soupy green beans. Don't. No, no, don't overthink it. You do it. You put the spaghetti on the tablecloth. Just think about Jet. they would love it Kaylee says on our birthdays

we get our nose buttered so whoever's birthday it is you always sneak attack them when they're eating breakfast or dinner and butter their nose wow I think I would like that you know

think about a little butter on your nose Belke my husband is in charge of filling our stockings for Christmas so he just goes to the pantry and kitchen and tries to find things that we would all like anything goes black beans for Vicky a banana for Alina, ramen noodles for Louisa, canned peaches for me, green chilies for himself.

Anything goes, and it's so fun. That's hilarious. A couple that come to mind. One of the things we do as a family is every year for Christmas, we all make these little custom plates. Oh, yeah, yeah. You draw on a piece of paper, like a plate design, and then you ship it to a company, they make it a plate,

and we have dozens of these. They're amazing. It's so fun. That's the only plates we use it at my mom's house. Aren't they called Make a Plate? I think that's right. Yeah. And it takes whatever, like a half hour.

But you go through the stack and you're like, wow, I remember that year. I remember that year. And then the stocking tradition in our house is my dad always used to put a book about hydration in our stocking because he loved water and hydrating. And then recently, hit pause on whatever you're listening to. and hit play on your next adventure this fall get double points on every qualified stay life's the trip make the most of it at best western visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions i guess it was like five years ago they discovered fireball whiskey do you remember yes they went to a

wedding and someone gave them a fireball shot and they were like my parents came back they're like you wouldn't believe it there's this have you heard a fireball it like your mom was so into it and they like don't drink any alcohol of any kind but now they give us a little fireball shot in our stockings for the adults obviously yeah um last one wow cassidy says every year we buy these certain holiday napkins that smell terrible we keep them packaged until christmas day so the smell can't air out right before our big lunch we open them and pass them around to the entire family and everyone has to take a sniff we all know they smell terrible but we still do it just so so we can all yell and laugh about it. Hilarious. Oh my gosh. That was a blast. That was a blast.

I want to do like a part two. So keep sending in the weird traditions. We'll ask again on social media. But thank you again to everyone who sent these family traditions in. The one I thought was the weirdest was the Inima Bag. That was weird. I agree with that. Yeah.

The Inima Bag is a little. And I don't feel bad saying that because I think they know. because that's like been up in there you know well i don't think maybe it's something i used in the bag you know uh we don't know we don't know um also just to list out a few of the things that we do since you guys i'm sure we'll ask let's talk christmas we do the hardware store train um smash burgers on christmas eve you want me to go through our list yeah this is all in the newsletter. We do gingerbread houses. We always do a competition where all the adults and all the kids get thrown into a bowl and you like pick your teams. And then we do a competition of who can do

the best gingerbread house. Nana is the one that chooses the winner. Yeah. What else we do? We do matching PJs Christmas Day. We all run upstairs and it's just like a massive explosion of presents. You just rip and tear. Kids. do a nativity reenactment yes do a christmas eve service with the candles it's always a hit um watch a wonderful life we do cookie decorating with all the cousins oh yeah um shh and then sean and i have specific traditions to us like our christmas experience slide shows um we go to opera land lights We do Elf on the Shelf, which is a blast. Also, the slideshow, because I'm sure we'll get questions.

So Andrew and I don't do gifts for each other on Christmas. Instead, we will talk about it at some point when it starts to get close to holiday season. What are we going to do this year for our slideshow presentation? So this year, we have decided that we're going to go on a big family trip. Similar to what we did with Paris and Italy and London this year, we enjoyed traveling with our kids that much that we want to do it again next summer and so next summer each of us are going to deep dive in plan we have chosen the southeastern hemisphere pretty much but we will each put together a big slideshow of what we think the perfect trip would be and then

after we present that to each other we each get to like pick little pieces and parts from each other's slideshow and then we'll put together our big family trip for next year. It's fun because every time Sean and I travel, it's completely unplanned. We just meant to go to Mexico City. We sat down at lunch after we landed and we just said, what do we want to do while we're here? And like literally, and it only takes us three minutes to find what we want to do. We booked this epic hot air balloon experience.

We'll tell you about that later. But this is fun, this tradition, because we act almost like travel agents to each other. and design like hey you really got to dig in and it's fun to learn about her because she'll pick out oh i want to do a whatever painting class you're like okay sweet and then you find that and you kind of like it's like a pitch it's fun it is really fun anyway thanks for listening as always you all this is a blast i love that we get to do this i love that we've been doing it for so long. I love the feedback that we get from you all. Just a little thought for you all before we sign off. I like to listen to my podcast on YouTube because of the comment section, mainly,

I think, because it feels like an interactive experience rather than someone just talking to me. So if you are watching on YouTube, please leave a comment because that's what makes this fun. And if you're listening on podcasts, maybe jump up to you. YouTube real quick and leave a comment. But I just want to say that because stuff like this, it's really fun with the conversation started around it. So please do that. And also have a wonderful day.

Thank you for listening. I'm Andrew. I'm John. We'll see you next time.