We asked you about your family traditions. Here are the submitted responses.

By Adele Zhou

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SAVINI RANAWEERA (12)

How did you come up with the idea of making family videos?

It first came the Thanksgiving of ‘08. We were really bored; the TV was on. All they kept playing was that one Guitar Hero World Tour commercial, and that song was stuck in all of our heads. We kept humming it, and my sister came up with the idea. She’s like,  “Why don’t we just make the video?” and we’re like “Okay.”

My sister says that a couple of years before that, we started a random video, because we just had a video camera and we had all of our cousins over, and we just started videotaping like everything, coming up with an idea when we had the more constructed Guitar Hero commercial thing. (It happened in) ’07.

How did you prepare for the commercial?

We got five pink shirts, and they were pretty big, and then we put on white shorts, and we put baby powder on the hardwood floor, so, like, you could slide on it with socks on. And we would put in music in the background, and we would just slide in. We had brooms for the guitars, and chopsticks we had for the drumsticks. So we kind of just did our thing and there was the whole blooper thing. It was a very good bonding time. It really was.

How do you decide what to record?

Usually we just pick, like, any commercial that really sticks out to us. Except last year we did the Michael Jackson, because he died that year, so it’s doing a tribute to Michael Jackson, because our family is a huge Michael Jackson fan. So like, this year, we’re planning on doing the Orbit commercial, the one that goes with the lint-licker and cootie queen one. ‘Cause that’s just hilarious. So that’s what we usually base it off on, the commercials that are known and stuff.

Which one is your favorite?

My favorite is definitely the Guitar Hero one, because it was a lot more spontaneous. The Michael Jackson one, we just kinda said, “We need to do a video.” We forced ourselves to practice until midnight to get the Thriller dance down. The Guitar Hero one was a lot more fun. It was definitely my favorite.

WATCH ONLINE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2-OAqbfNh4

ANDREW RILEY (11)

How did you come up with the idea of the “Survivor” event?

We just really liked the show, and all the neighbors were just really friendly, and the whole neighborhood was just really close. It was just a bunch of families. There were up to 25 people there, parents and kids included.

Can you describe the activities that you did?

We tried to recreate it. We had things like jalapeno eating contest, endurance type things, scavenger hunts in the woods. At the end of the day,  we would all just hang out and stuff, like all the families.

Did this happen every summer?

We did it twice. We had a couple different traditions we did back then.

Did this bring your family closer together?

Yeah, and the whole neighborhood. It was just really great.