Pizza and Slurpees

As I was running around doing errands today, I started thinking about all of the things that I need to get ready before December 1st so that we can start doing all of our family traditions. I know that I have already written that we do follow alot of my parent's traditions, but there are a few that are our own. One such tradition is that on Christmas Eve, at lunch time we always have Pizza and Slurpees. I always giggle to myself when I think about it because it makes me remember the origins of that tradition.
When Otto was in school and Abby and Anne were just little babies there was a year when my Grandma and Grandpa Bennion were out of town (we usually have dinner on Christmas Day) visiting my Aunt Christie for Christmas. On Christmas Eve we did the usual dinner with the Lee side (and what a party it always is). On Christmas Day, we did our Christmas thing at our house and then we went over to my parent's house to open presents with them. We had lunch with them and then they asked us if we were going to go home to have naps. Well, we took the hint and we left. At about 4:00, Otto and I realized that we hadn't made any dinner plans for Christmas Day. We weren't going to be able to go to my Bennion Grandparent's house, Grandma Lee was spending the day with Uncle Garry, my parents made it obvious that we needed to be elsewhere, and Otto's family all lived out of town. It was the weirdest feeling. I didn't have any groceries, but we figured that since movie theatres were open on Christmas Day, restaurants would be too. NOPE!! We drove around for 2 hours looking for somewhere to eat. The girls had fallen asleep in the back, but I was getting really hungry.
Finally, I remembered that I had some frozen pizza in the freezer, and we swung by good old 7-11 and picked up some slurpees to go with it. So that year, on Christmas Day, we had a healthy little family dinner of pizza and slurpees.
Otto and I have decided to incorporate this event into our yearly traditions to help us remember that day. I want to make sure that we remember it so that the kids can learn how important it is to 1 - plan ahead and 2 - make sure that no one is ever forgotten. Whenever I think about that day, I always giggle to myself because who would have thought that I would not have made sure that we had plans on Christmas day.