Welcome to Episode 207 of Live Happy Now.

I'm your host, Paula Phelps, thanking you for joining us today.

Mother's Day is right around the corner, and that's a great time to visit the idea of family traditions.

And today's guest is all about making memories and creating traditions with your family.

Jessica Smart is the author of Memory Making Mom, Building Traditions That Breathe

Life into your home.

Her book looks at how you can put aside the daily distractions and create personal traditions

to bring more meaning and balance to your family's lives.

She sat down with me to explain what creating family traditions does for us and how you

can fit them into your busy life. Jessica, welcome so much to live happy now. We are delighted to get you on

the show today. Thank you so much for having me. Well, I wanted to know, this was a great time of year

to do something for moms because there is a holiday coming up. I think

we've all heard of it, Mother's Day. People, if you haven't bought your cards and flowers yet,

you better get on it. But so this made it a perfect time to talk about your book, memory making mom.

And I think the first thing that struck me is a book about traditions. why would you want to do a book about creating

traditions? What started this thought in your head? I think for a long time I sort of felt

angsty and guilty that it wasn't fun enough and our house was kind of lame and we just did a lot

out of the same things, but I didn't quite know how to fix it. And it just kind of dawned on me one day in talking to an older gentleman who is on the other side of parenting how powerful traditions are.

And that they're kind of to go a little bit deep for a second.

They're like the missing link between what we care about and how to make it actually happen.

And the cool thing is it's different for every family.

If you love sports,

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