Family rituals

 One topic I have been scrapping about with the class Twelve is ritual. There are formal rituals--weddings, baptisms, graduation, etc.--and informal rituals. I have a certain bedtime routine that is almost ritualistic. Same with my morning coffee. And the dog walk or jog when I get home.

One family ritual I scrapped recently is the family walk. Every Thanksgiving we follow the meal with a walk. Since last fall, when we quit the gym and lost the regular family swims on the weekend, we have been going for family jogs or walks most weekend. With this past charmed winter, we were able to do that even in the middle of January.

 

  

  

This walk I brought my camera. Rowan didn't want to go, but once we got to the lake, I took the boys down to look at the ice, and Rowan was so fascinated he forgot to be upset. Later, he found a big stick a la Gandalf, and that really cheered him up.

When we walked by Elm Creek, we started looking for bobber trees, trees riddled with bobbers that people snagged when they had been casting for fish a little too close to the woods.That was a mini treasure hunt.

To scrap this page, I used this week's sketch from Sketch Support. I kept pretty close to the sketch. Since it was a January walk, I picked subdued colors. Since this winter was basically snowless, I picked yellow as the dominant color, the color of the straw fields we walked by.

 

 

I added snowflakes to suggest winter, plus some flourish stitches for movement. I painted the flakes yellow to suggest warmth, and I added bits of woodgrain stamps to the flakes to dirty them up a bit.

What's one family ritual you should scrap?