Three Things : Weekdays + Creative Family Giveaway

A few family times I truly enjoy is eating dinner together, taking hikes/walks, and watching America's Funniest Videos. When I was young we would watch the Wonderful World of Disney every Sunday night, then Beachcombers (I grew up close to the Canadian border), now ABC has AFV on Sunday nights, so this is a nice wind-down to the weekend and we all enjoy watching and laughing. I have a three year old, six year old, and 15 year old step son (all boys), so to find something that appeals to all age groups can be difficult - but regardless of the age, everyone likes a good giggle.
Karen C
(NH)

Favorite thing? There are so many--walks, board games, reading, eating dinner together. But our favorite is probably baking together. Cookies, brownies, bread. Yum!

We have two. One is we eat dinner together every night and nobody leaves the table until everyone is finished. No small feat with a 4 year old, 2 year old, and 6 month old. The other is we farm about 5 acres and we do it all together. The kids love it, they learn about farming and food, and we all have a great time getting dirty together.

Pick me! Pick me!
Oh...happy Tuesday Ali!
Jessi

Pick me! Pick me!
Oh...happy Tuesday Ali!
Jessi

We love to hang out in the backyard and swing while my husband grills!
I would love to have this book! My son, Mason will be 2 in July and I'd love to nurture his creative side!
Thanks! Lindsay in AR

Gardening. Each family members has their own pair of gloves and tools and we head into the yard gardening and talking and sharing in the joys of growing our own food.

My husband and I have two boys - our favorite thing to do together as a FAMILY - believe it or not - is to go dirt bike riding! My "guys" are faster than I am, but I love it as much as they do. We travel in our motorhome, meet up with cousins and other friends for days at a time. Really, so much fun!

As a family we all sit down and eat dinner. Of course, it's not always easy especially with a 16 month old picky eater and 3 yr old who doesn't like to feed himself.

Ooh, I've been dreaming about this book!

Ali,
I was just thinking about you and wondering how your health is. I hope you are doing well.
Seeing a slice of your life and how you are with Simon always inspires me.
As a family we love to hang out in the pool and grill cheeseburgers. Here in Arizona we get to do a lot of that in the summer. Everyone enjoys it - the 13 year old, the 4 year old, the 10 month old, and us old folks!

Hiking. There are no distractions (TV, phone, etc) and we can have wonderful converstations. Being in Oregon there is no limit to the beautiful places we can go to hike...as you well know! My 4 1/2 year old son loves to hike and did a 2 miler the other day! 18 month old daughter loves being in the backpack! Mom and dad love the quiet and fresh air!

Oops - posted before I had mentioned what we do creatively as a family. My daughter loves to listen to my husband play the guitar or mandolin. We'll all break out an instrument of some sort and play along. She loves dancing around, clapping, and tweetling on the recorder or banging on the drum.

We love to garden together. Digging in the dirt makes everyone happy, especially planting veges. Not so fun my daughter finding a worm lol.

We love to take walks together as a family. With a 4 year old, a 3 year old, and 7 week old, that is something we can all do together. We also make a list at the beginning of the summer of all the places we'd like to go as a family. Then we have all our ideas in one place and can cross them off as we accomplish things.

Yard work. Think about it. All of you working together toward a common goal. Nothing like some hot sweaty yard work to bring a family closer together (actually, not physically closer lol)But, the feeling of an accomplished task is a good feeling, + that feeling you always get looking at a freshly mowed lawn.

We really like to take walks around our neighborhood. Since we're still in an apartment and we don't have a backyard, the neighborhood has to do for now. I can't wait until we have our own space, because then we'll start doing fun family camp-outs in the backyard. For now I have to settle for the ones in the living room. :)

Oh, this book looks like a little treasure! Let's see...One of the activities I love doing as a family is snuggling in my son's bed while we read a story together. :)

Sunday night dinner at our favorite mexican restaurant. No tv, no phones, live guitar music to sing. Very nice!

Our favorite thing was camping ... we'd play the "they might be giants" CD by Flood and sing those goofy songs all the way to the campground ... learning to enjoy our kids' music helped us bond together during those times. Our kids early teens during those days - before that I was a single mom/full time engineering student/part time employee with no time to play.
Now that we have grandchildren we are often astounded that our biggest regret is that we didn't plan out regular blocks of time to just play (as we do with our grandchildren.) Who would have thought that would have been so important? We see the difference it makes in the lives of our grandchildren and we're really sad that we just didn't get it when our kids were little.
Great blog Ali! I read it every day!