Resolve – The national infertility association – posted an article today on ‘tips for coping with the Holidays’.

I thought I’d take a look because the last article I ‘Pffftt-ed’ from Resolve I ended up regretting – coping with Halloween. I ‘Pfffft-ed’ it when I saw the headline ‘Coping with Halloween’ on my facebook feed because I honestly thought it was a ridiculous idea. Why would it be difficult to deal with Halloween? And then Halloween came along and by the end of the evening I completely understood.

I had actually never experienced the Halloween fun since moving to the US because I had been on work travels the past two years. This year I was excited to actually be in the country because Americans go all out when it comes to Halloween. I had to yet to experience American Trick-or-Treating.

I bought a couple of pumpkins and two of the biggest bags of fun pack sized sweeties (candy) I could find. I made Chris go and dig out all the halloween decorations from the shed. I wanted to get into the spirit of things.  On the eve of halloween we dressed up as ghost muskateers and went to a friends party – adults only! It was so much fun.

On halloween night itself, we went to a friends house to chill out. We sat outside in their front garden around a fire pit, making ‘smores and giving out candy to the tiny terror trick-or-treaters. It was everything I imagined trick-or-treating to be in the US. The kids had fantastic costumes – some kids even turned up in a limo! After a bit of questioning we found out that the kids in the limo were from a neighbourhood that perhaps one wouldn’t go trick-or-treating (the adults followed in a different car). It was the sweetest thing, and they were by far the politest children too. Adorable. All this cuteness around – our friends have a newborn baby too who dressed up too! It was a bit too much for me and I felt a bit sad by the end of the night.

If we do fall pregnant with the next round of IVF we might have our own newborn to dress up in a cute costume. Chris said that next time we will just have to borrow a kid for the night and actually go trick-or-treating with them if we haven’t successfully produced our own by then!!

So now I actually understand what the Resolve article was all about. Halloween is not an easy holiday to cope with when dealing with infertility. I just had no clue.

Resolve’s article today contained some useful tips for coping with upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. I won’t replicate them here, you can take a look for yourself here.  They are worth a read.

But I will mention the one tip that really stuck out for me:

“Begin your own family traditions: a special ceremony or ritual that says that you and your partner are already a family, and that you can rejoice in your love for each other, with or without children”

I liked it because it is so true. In particular as we are thousands of miles away from our family it is even more important to create our own family traditions. Chris and I brainstormed ideas for what could be our tradition – we talked about food and drink (making our own things), activities like volunteering at a shelter, going for walks etc. And playing games….

One of our favourite hobbies together is playing games. We even have our own games night tuesday where we switch off the TV and play some games. We also have our own cribbage league. The day after we got married we started counting the cribbage wins in a little notebook. We carry a deck of cards, mini travel fold out cribbage board and the little score notebook where ever we go. It’s a bit of a talking point in cafes and restaurants as we get our crib board out and play away! Each year there is a decisive winner (Chris is currently winning!!!)…we will continue this tradition forever! We also hold games night dinner parties too. As you can tell, we like playing games!

But what has all this got to do with coping with the holidays? Well, we decided to create our own family game. It will be called “‘Insert Our Family Name Here’ Fluxx”. Fluxx is a card game where the rules are constantly changing – it is a lot of fun.

There are many themed variations of this card game e.g. Pirate Fluxx, Monty Python Fluxx, Zombie Fluxx, Oz Fluxx etc…So we will create our own Fluxx like card with the theme of…us!! And this will be the game we play at Christmas. The great thing about Fluxx is that it is suitable for all ages, so it really will be a family game. I am so excited to get started on making this game – just in time for Christmas! A small thing to get us started on creating our own family tradition over the holidays 🙂