“Mom, “ said my smiling six year old, “I want us to sit at the table. Together.”
“Together? Right now?” I exclaimed.
“Yes, for a REAL dinner.”
Then it hit me, a thought that made me feel guilty and sad all at the same time. The fact that our family never sits together for dinner. Such a normal, family activity. Something I’d seen done at friends house, and always wanted my own parents to do. Here I was, not doing it.
My natural train of thought started probing through other areas of our lifes. Trying to find some other family activities we always did together. That’s when I discovered something even more alarming, our family (my husband Jay and our four children) hardly did anything together. Sure, we sat together at grandma’s for Christmas and thanksgiving, and had an awful time since the family fights so badly. And sure, we’d get a tree and decorate for holidays. We even went on vacations like any normal family. BUT we never did the same thing year after year. We really didn’t have any tradtions at all.
I did a lot of thinking, searching, and note taking to come up with some traditions (of all types) to start with our family. I plan on sharing them hear as they happen with updates along the way. This is only part one of many hopefully.
With “back to school” a lot of new changes came about. The most important being a schedule of household chores for each family member and a daily schedule to help keep up with what’s going on. On our refrigerator is where I hang the lists, next to the calendar that I also fill in with special events as they come up.
Keeping up with my theme to help build traditions in my family, this new school year I found a neat group called American Heritage Girls that I’m taking my B (six year old) to check out on Friday. Its like Girl Scouts but with a huge focus on the Lord. I love the idea and think it will be an awesome place for B to make some friends outside of public school.
With two kids in school (B and T, T’s in preschool) I decided our two year old Jr will need something to do and came across a website called hubardscupboard.com that has a christian preschool curriculum for each age (2s, 3s, and 4s). It starts very basic with just fun games and story books for the two year olds, but by four they dive straight into the bible and kind of tie it all together with Christian character qualities. I’m excited to start this with our lil one and we’ll see how it goes. Maybe home schooling is on the horizons? Lol
What about you? What does your family do for Back to School?
