Family always should come first to everyone. Everyone has traditions they do with their parents and family like places they go to, eat dinner, and other types of things. We all love our family even though we don’t show it all the time and they all know it. Deep down you know there is love for your family. Everyone is caring within your family that you can even imagine. When people meet up for Christmas everyone in the house is excited to see one another. All of your family is sitting around the fire telling stories about the past. Everyone is having a good time throwing back some laughs. Do you remember those times? Everyone should because it is when your family comes together. You all come together to share what is new with your life and what are some problems that might be coming up. Your family is there to help you through your ups and downs. They will always be there for you and the holidays make it even better because your whole family comes together. Then you can talk to your whole family about your problems at that time. The traditions I have with my family are coming together during the holiday like Christmas. I have done two things that I love doing with my family. One was a trip to New York to visit with my uncle and the other was mushroom hunting with my family that I do every year. Most of the time it is my dad’s side that celebrates those holidays more by his whole side of the family coming over and meeting at one person’s house. We all come together as a family and talk about things kind of like play catch up. It really isn’t that bad, it can be fun at times. I can’t complain about any of it since it isn’t that bad. It makes who I am and how I was developed. I’m going to tell you about it.

Mushroom hunting is a tradition my family has done for many years. Most of my family is from Indiana, but I have an uncle from New York. We go down to my cousin’s house that is an hour and a half away. We travel for a long time, but I have an uncle that comes from New York. He has it the worst in my opinion. It is special to us because we always have everyone over and have dinner.
All of the guys go out to the woods to look for mushrooms while the girls stay at home and fix dinner. We go to the same woods every year since we have been doing it. We find mushrooms that are called morels. They taste really good when they are fried. It is just a tradition that we do every year. One time my whole family was in the woods and we weren’t finding any mushrooms at all. I was pretty much all by myself for a while and I had wrestling early the other day, I was really tired the whole time I was there. I started lying down on top of a fallen tree; I just laid there and stared at the never-ending trees towards the sky. I closed my eyes and fell into a heavy sleep. I woke up about thirty minutes later and looked around. I was in a panic for about five minutes because I didn’t know where anyone was. I thought they might have left me behind. I started running through the woods to find someone around me. I finally heard something in the woods close by. I ran towards the noise thinking it was one of my family members. I ran all the way to the noise in the distance I saw a person. It was my uncle standing there with a stick in his hand searching out the land for mushrooms to eat. I felt relieved that I found one of my family members knowing that they didn’t leave me behind because I had no clue where we were at all. I can only recognize the woods if I seen them. That time was pretty special to me.

New York blew me away from all of the neat buildings and how everything was made down there. We stayed at my uncle’s house over night and we stay for about 4 days. I saw the empire state building, statue of liberty, ground zero, and all of Wall Street. We were going to visit the empire state building the first day I got into New York. I arrived at New York around 10:30 a.m. We started walking towards the empire state building and it was as tall as the sky could reach. In New York, everything is a really fast pace so you are always almost in a jog everywhere. You fast walk all around New York just to get anywhere. We got all the way to the entrance of the empire state building and my uncle was searching through his bag to find the tickets. He knew he printed them off, but he couldn’t find the tickets at all. He started thinking about where he might have put them and he realized he left them at his house. We had to run all the way to his work to get them printed off to go up the 186 story empire state building. We got all the way to his work and he jumped on his computer and printed them off right away. We ran all the way back to the empire state building and went through the gate to go up. My uncle told one of the people that worked there a name of a friend and we skipped all the lines. We skipped out on 2 hours of sitting in a line waiting to go up. We got all the way to the top and you could see all of New York and also some of New Jersey. It was a beautiful sight to see. If you ever go to New York, you should definitely go up to the top of the empire state building.

Christmas is always a time to sit around the fire with your family opening gifts from each other. A couple years ago, my mom decided to bring our dogs along to my cousin’s house where we go every year. The dog was having fun running all over the place. We couldn’t keep track of where the dog was going. We were all sitting around in the living room getting ready to pass around gifts. The dog walks up and started to sniff the gifts, but we didn’t think anything about it. The dog walked all around the tree to the back where we couldn’t see her. We were passing around gifts and wondering why my sister’s gifts were a little wet. All of a sudden, everyone started to busted out laughing so hard, but my sister didn’t think anything about it. She kept asking why her gifts were wet. We finally told her that the dog peed on her gifts and she started to cry. Everyone else was laughing and telling her it would be ok because her gifts had a lot of wrapping on it that it never even go to the gifts. That was about the funniest Christmas I have ever been to.

Family traditions and trips can be fun and enjoying for everyone. Mushroom hunting is always something that people should do to enjoy the time with their family. Every family has their own types of traditions they do every year besides holidays. New York was just a blast to be at for four days. My mom and sister had a good time also. My sister is more into taking pictures because most of my mom’s side of the family takes photography. She got like 300 pictures of all over New York. Christmas is just a time to celebrate with your family because you always feel loved around them. You have someone to cheer you up and have a memorable time with. My family is always exciting to be around.