Finding peace in our Christmas traditions

My wife and I have been together since 2018, and ever since then we have been trying to come up with different traditions to do together.
She is from southern Minnesota, I am from Rhode Island, so as you can imagine, it becomes difficult at times, especially during the holidays.
Throughout the years we have come up with ones like going to every Red Sox versus Twins series at Target Field during the summer (I of course cheer for the better team), and we do the typical things like watch the ball drop at midnight on New Years Eve. One year it was special, I proposed to her, but I was too nervous to wait until midnight, so instead I proposed hours earlier, another story, for a different time.
Then there are the holidays; which can sometimes prove to be a logistical nightmare.
We decided a long time ago, we would spend Christmas opposite of where we are living. When we were in Rhode Island for a few years, we would come to Minnesota for Christmas, and now that we’re back in Minnesota, we will be heading to Rhode Island in a couple of weeks.
With moving around a lot, between myself moving from St. James, to Kasson, then our move to Rhode Island, and back to Minnesota, we have found ourselves for many years trying to come up with special traditions unique to us during the holidays.
Now that we are locked into a 30 year mortgage, and since we never want to pack again, we expect to be in our home for the foreseeable future up here in the Twin Cities, so we decided our new tradition will be to go to the annual tree lighting ceremonies, and Christmas events in town.
On Saturday, we went to the Christmas market, where each year they sell mugs commemorating the annual event.
On our short Uber ride over to the event, we decided we would get one cup each. As my wife explained it, we’re gonna be here for 30 years or longer.
After walking around deciding on potential Christmas presents, we enjoyed the seasonably warm day, walked and got a slice of pizza, and then made our way to the train station to catch the tree lighting ceremony and fireworks.
As we did last year (which was much colder) we got there early enough so we could literally have a front row seat.
A couple of weeks ago, we checked out the fireworks, and tree lighting, at a different park, and ended up winning four tickets to see the Little Mermaid, which meant we got to take my in-laws to the show as well.
Living halfway across the country from where I grew up can be hard at times during the holidays, but finding peace with our new traditions has been a blessing.
I hope the same can be true for all the families in Dodge County and beyond.