Christy, I love your putt-putt tradition with your dad, and how the score cards are physical mementos of those times. I've always loved tradition, too. My husband and I make real efforts to create meaningful traditions for our kids. It's especially important to us, because we're a "blended family"—our oldest daughter is his biological daughter, and the younger two are mine. It adds a whole new twist to tradition. We try to take some from each of our pasts and add new details, while also creating entirely new traditions for our new family.

Elaine, that's a great way to put it: "moving past what is expected of us." The ironic thing about it all, when it comes to parenting, is that the expectations are usually created by other parents, and by marketing and a hundred other prompters, but not by our kids and what they really want (as you point out). It's good to move beyond those expectations.