What would you do if you could spend a whole day with your family doing whatever you want?
As I get older it seems that time is speeding up. Life gets busier and busier and it can be difficult to carve out precious family time. Between rehearsals, practices, work commitments, church meetings, homework and everyday life it’s easy to get a little—ok a lot–distracted. My husband and I were discussing that in the new year we would like to focus more on meaningful family experiences and it got me thinking: If I had one day free from any obligations what would we choose to do as a family?
Recently as I scrolled through Instagram looking at my friend’s holiday activities it struck me that we all have different interests and hobbies. One family I know makes time to plan a family backpacking adventure every summer. Another one travels across the country to attend a sporting event together. Others love the beach, or watching musicals, playing board games or exploring their hometown together as a family. So there’s no one “perfect family activity” – your ideas for family activities may be totally different from others’ and that’s great!
As for my familly, if we could do anything together for a day, Disneyland would probably win hands down. (We are die hard Disney fans here). But if we are keeping it local (and a lot less expensive and relaxing) I think we would go with sleeping in, lunch out together at our favorite restaurant, an afternoon movie and the chance to just connect with one another.
Your ideas may be small or grand. The beauty of this question is there is no wrong answer. So what do you say? If you could do anything with your family for a day, what would it be?
Follow up question: How can you make this wonderful day you’ve described happen in the next few months?
(For some doable ideas for instilling more family time read: “Two Simple Ways To Nourish Family Life”)
Our perfect day would probably be going for a long hike as a family. Although the kids often grumble about it when we bring up the idea and it can be quite an ordeal getting out the door, we have so much fun together once we’re on a hike together! We love pointing out all the beautiful things we see, the younger kids climb all over every rock and tree we find, and we look out over gorgeous vistas, tired and triumpant, then head back down the mountain enjoying good talks as we do the easy downhill part of the treck. Then at the end of the hike, we go get some food at a favorite restaurant and that food tastes so extra good after all that hiking! Everyone is always in a great mood as we eat. Then we’d go home and play games. We love playing games together. Then maybe we’d end it all with pizza and a movie. What would make the day extra fun would be if the kids would all be nice to each other and to their parents all day and not complain about anything – but we’ll take the day with or without the squabbles and complaining!
A perfect day would include a big breakfast and some time to play some games together. We do enjoy movies so I am sure we would squeeze one of those in too if we could. We would end the day getting dinner together. We love to eat out but hate breaking the budget so this year we gave each child a gift card to their favorite restaurant. We will use those throughout the year to eat out as a family.. so we can enjoy the meal without breaking the budget for the month!!
I love the gift card idea! We too, love to eat out. I’ll have to keep that in mind.
Gift cards for restaurant visits – brilliant! Thanks for sharing!!
Since my husband’s switched over to teaching, we have quite a bit of time as a family. We might have something yummy for breakfast, maybe made by the kids.
We’d probably do a small or large work project (we just built house in the countryside here in Europe), where even our 4yr old works with serious tools.
Then an afternoon hike – hikes and outings seem to bring about some of the most bonding moments! Sometimes combined with a visit to the lake.
The perfect day would end with a board game or a movie and a lengthy bedtime story read by Daddy (Narnia chronicles right now or our all-time favorite Astrid Lindgren books)!
So cute…love this post. We just spent MLK day with a new idea…that I think we’ll for sure make a tradition. We had a family decathlon. It was sooo fun. Literally just a play day all day- 10 ‘events’ and we had our family in 2 teams. We did things like: bocce ball, rock paper scissor tournament, scooter races, ladder toss, parcheesi and sequence in teams, Mario cart, and a puzzle race (just 100 pieces), Kuba and points for room cleaning… (that was my idea) 🙂 🙂 🙂 Some events were just a few minutes, and some longer, but the winning team picked where we ate out at dinner.