One of the perks of parenting is getting the opportunity to decide which family traditions to carry over into the new generation. Some traditions from your own childhood will get the boot, but others are exciting to experience again from a different lens, and still others will be new traditions from your spouse's family or other sources of inspiration that you come across.

Growing your own play tent every year is a neat, new experience to look forward to as the weather warms up and school winds down. Half the fun of a tradition is being able to look forward to it: you get excited knowing it's coming up around the same time every year. With a living play tent, however, you never quite know what the new season will bring. Maybe the weather will cooperate and you'll harvest an abundant crop this summer or maybe a rogue squirrel will munch on one of your carefully tended vines (oh no!). One thing you can count on is that you'll go through each new experience together. You'll problem-solve together and celebrate success together and those values are transformational and those memories will last long after the beans have dried.