Making Christmas Less About Presents and More About Family
As my children are getting older, I find that what I did for gifts for Christmas when they were younger is starting not to work as well now that they are growing up. For some reason, this year, I wanted our Christmas to be less about the presents and more about spending time together as a family. I am unsure if it is because I am also getting older and realizing what is most important in my life, which is the time I spend with my family.
We went on a family vacation this past summer to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. While there, we decided to splurge a little and do a couple of excursions. We went zip-lining in the jungle, and we swam with dolphins. While we were doing these excursions, the thought kept coming to me repeatedly. We need to do more experiences like this for Christmas instead of just buying stuff. I think that is when my attitude about Christmas changed for me.
Months after our vacation, we still talk about those excursions and always look at the pictures. Do the kids ever talk about what they got for Christmas in the past? Nope, they sure don’t. Most of the time, it seems that once they return to school from their Christmas break, they are done playing with the gifts they received that Christmas. To me, that seems like a massive waste of money.
So this Christmas, my husband and I tried to do an experience gift. I think my children loved this idea more than a bunch of tiny gifts. What is an expereince gift? If you’re not familiar with an experience gift, a few examples would be season tickets to an amusement park, a museum, an aquarium, movie passes, a trip somewhere, something you can all do together as a family, etc… We live in a small town, so we don’t have amusement parks or museums near by, so I tried thinking outside the box to find an experience gift I can do with my family that would bring us closer together and let us hang out.
The idea I finally came up with was getting e-bikes for everyone in the family. We love to go bike riding, and used to go all the time until we moved, so we hardly go anymore because we now live on a hill. It has been so hard to go bike riding because of that. No matter what direction we go from our house, we will be riding up a hill. We only go on bike rides once or maybe twice a summer now, and I miss going on a family bike ride. Now that we got e-bikes, hopefully, this will help with our problem of living on a hill and we’ll be able to get out on bike rides as a family more often. I hope we can spend some more quality time together as a family this coming summer, and that we will talk about the e-bikes we got for Christmas for years to come.
Making memories to me is important to me and this seemed like a perfect year to start with experience gifts. Do you have any experience gifts you have tried? I would love to hear your ideas. Please share!
The Easiest Meal Plan For Busy Families!
When you first hear the words “meal planning,” do you think about running the other way? Don’t worry—mine is, too. I don’t enjoy making a meal plan. Sometimes, it is just hard to sit down and make one. I have used several different meal plans over the years. The one I use now I have been using for a couple of years, and it is the easiest one I have used.
The only things I use are a large calendar and a notepad to write my grocery list. I like to use a school calendar. Instead of the regular calendar going from January to December, I use a school calendar from July to June. It is also larger than a traditional calendar, and the boxes for the days are large enough to add everything you need to add for the day—including your dinner idea!
You can call me old-fashioned, but I still like to write everything down. I write our lessons, practices, appointments, recitals, or whatever else we have on the calendar. I hang the calendar in the kitchen to look at it several times a day.
I like to make meal plans for two weeks at a time. It seems like a lot and may seem overwhelming, but it becomes easier once you get the hang of it. Doing the menu for two weeks at a time means you only have to make your major grocery shopping trips about twice a month. It works out so much better for someone like me who hates grocery shopping. I will make smaller trips to the grocery store if we need fresh produce or run out of milk. Those trips are easy and quick. This makes it so you are not always going to the grocery store.
I like to do my grocery shopping early in the week. If you would like to have a schedule, then pick the same day of the week to go. If I go earlier in the week, the grocery store isn’t as busy. I recommend that you go grocery shopping while the kids are at school. Then they aren’t sneaking things in the cart or begging you to buy them something. I don’t know about you, but this saves me money!
When it is time for me to do my meal planning, I grab my calendar and notepad. I will go through each night of the upcoming weeks and write what we will have for dinner that night on the calendar. If I write it on the calendar, I can see what activity we have for the evening. That way, I know exactly how much time I have to make dinner. If I need a quick meal, I know. If I have a free evening, I can try a new recipe or plan a dinner that takes longer. The nice thing about planning out your meals on the calendar is if you have a hard time coming up with a dinner idea, you can look back in your calendar and get ideas you have had in the past.
There are nights when we are so busy that we end up eating out. For the most part, though, I like to have dinner at home. Having a plan helps me not eat out as much; however, eating out is sometimes a necessary evil!
I also like to have what I call a pantry night. On pantry nights, we either have leftovers, or I let the kids grab whatever they want to make. Sometimes, we all eat the same thing, but most of the time, we each have our own quick dinners, even cold cereal. I usually do a pantry night once a week.
I get my notepad and make a grocery list once I have all my dinners planned for the next two weeks. Once again, I use a notepad because I am old-fashioned and like to write my list down on paper, but you do what is easiest for you. If making a list on your phone is easier, then do that. I go through each day and list what I need for that meal. It sounds like a lot but remember, I do a pantry night, and we end up eating out at least twice, sometimes more. I end up buying groceries for at least ten meals.
Meal planning this way helps me avoid having to think about what we are having for dinner all the time. The kids can also look at the calendar, and they know what we are having for dinner that night. If you have read some of my other posts, you know that I have some very picky eaters. Knowing what we are having for dinner lets them prepare themselves for what they will be trying that night!
Meal planning this way has helped me be more organized and prepared. It also takes some of the stress out of dinner time. Hopefully, this helps someone out there. I do find that this has been the easiest way to plan meals for my family and our busy schedule!
What are your meal-planning ideas? I would love to hear them! Happy Meal Planning!!!!
Spelling Struggles With an ADHD Child
Do you have a child that has ADHD and struggles with spelling? I have one of those, too. Did you know that is a common side effect of ADHD? I didn’t realize this until my son was in his older grades in school. It would have been so nice and saved me so many hours if I had known this when he was in elementary school.
When my son was in elementary school, he had weekly spelling tests. The teacher would send home the words for the week on Monday, and we would practice them until his test on Friday. On Monday, I would have him go over his words with me. I would make sure he could read them and then have him write them down.
For the rest of the week, I would take a practice spelling test to see which words he could spell and which words he needed to work on. He always had words that he needed to work on. I would go over the words he needed help with, and then I would have him write them down three times. I felt that as the week went on, he would or should be able to improve on the practice spelling test. This, however, did not happen.
He would either get the same words wrong every day, or he would get words that he spelled right at the beginning of the week and then start spelling them wrong. We would talk about a word over and over again. I would have him write it down so many times. He could spell a word he got wrong, but if you asked him the next day, he couldn’t remember how to spell it. I could have him write it down a hundred times (I never actually did this), and he would still get it wrong.
At that time, it was the most frustrating thing in the world. We went over it so many times. Why can you not remember how to spell it? I would get so frustrated at him. I would ask him why he couldn’t remember how to spell that word. We went over it so many times. His response always was, “I don’t know.” I sometimes would get so frustrated that I had to have my husband help him with it.
My son was my firstborn, so I was a first-time young mother. Like most parents, I wanted my child to succeed at school. We would go over the words many times, and I would try many different strategies. Some worked and some didn’t. I will share those strategies that helped a little below.
Here is what was very strange to me. I would bring it up to his teacher every year, asking what I could do to help him with his spelling. Every teacher told me not to worry about it because we have spell checkers nowadays and have him do his best. Of course, I didn’t like this response, so I would continue pushing him to improve his spelling. I thought he would improve if we just kept working on it. This, however, did not happen. He never really got any better at spelling.
I found out years later that spelling is incredibly hard for children with ADHD. When I found this out, I felt horrible. All the time, energy, and frustration were wasted on both ends. If I had known this earlier, I would not have worried about it so much. I wouldn’t have made my son practice spelling so much or had him write his words down so much.
My son is now 17 years old. He can spell better than he used to, but he still has difficulty spelling, which is okay. This is just one of the challenges he has had in his life, and he has to work with it. He is still a great student despite not being able to spell well. He is incredibly smart and has such big goals for his future. If I had known how great he would have turned out, his younger school years would have been so different.
So I hope that this article helps some of you younger mothers or fathers. If your child struggles with spelling, they can and will still be great students. Please give them a little slack on their spelling.
Here are some ideas on how to make spelling a little more interesting for them and you!
- Practice on a small whiteboard with different color markers.
- Get a small tray, put some sugar or sand in it, and have them practice spelling the words with their finger.
- Get some window markers that they can use to write on a window or a mirror.
- Bath crayons are a fun option that they can use to write on the side of the tub.
- You can use anything with letters, such as blocks or magnets.
I hope that some of these ideas help your child with their spelling.
Do any of you have a child struggling with spelling? I would love to hear from you. What ideas do you have for helping your child with spelling? Please share your ideas!
3 Summer Rules for Our Summer Vacation – Lessons Learned
Welcome back. As you can only guess, we had one crazy summer. I didn’t even have time to write a single article, either because we were busy or I was tired from being busy. I hope to pick up where I left off, but please be patient because I am still learning how to do this.
I wrote an article earlier this summer, 3 Summer Rules for Our Summer Vacation, about the rules we would have for the summer. That was in early June. Today, I thought I would update you on how we did with those rules and the lessons we learned over the summer.
We did excellent following our summer rules for the first week or so. After that, life got in the way, and xthings just went downhill. I would say that halfway through June, we started only doing about half of the summer rules. We would get up, get dressed, and have breakfast. We would do a chore or two about every other day.
July is when we usually take our family’s summer vacation. This year was no exception. In about three weeks, we went on our family vacation to Alaska, had a family reunion trip to Bear Lake, my daughter went on a camping trip with a young women’s group, and I went on my girls’ weekend with my sisters and mom. I previously wrote about my family’s girls’ weekends in Discover the Magic of a Girls’ Weekend.
With all that going on, we hardly had enough time to get up and dressed, let alone do any chores. Sure, we would do basic stuff. I would have time to clean the kitchen and do the dishes. I would do laundry when I could, but most of the time, we didn’t have time to fold it or put it away. I would vacuum every once in a while, but not every day like before.
By the time we got to August, we were trying to recover from our busy July and survive until school started again. The children hardly did a single chore. At this point, the kids were doing whatever they wanted so I could get stuff done myself. It sounds horrible, but they were running around being kids, hanging with friends, and enjoying the last few weeks of summer. I was okay with it.
Of course, our chaos and recovery made the house go downhill pretty quickly. We got very behind on our laundry from our trips, and cleaning was almost nonexistent.
Luckily, the weekend before school started, we had nothing. I mean nothing. There were no soccer, dance, band, or family gatherings. I bet you can guess what I made my family do that weekend. We spent the weekend putting our house back in order. Did the kids love that their last weekend was spent cleaning? Absolutely not! It needed to be done, so I had them help me anyway!!! I am a mean mom, I know!
What are my takeaways from our three summer rules? There are a few; here they are.
- It was a good idea, in theory!
- Did I have good intentions? Yes!
- We tried, but life got in the way. That is okay.
- Did we still have a good summer? Yes, we did!
- Did we fail in our summer rules? Yes, we failed horribly.
Yes, we failed horribly, but do you know what? I am okay with that. We tried something new, and it didn’t work. I have learned from this summer, and I will make adjustments for next summer. It was a good lesson for the children that it didn’t work out as planned, but it was still a great summer. Failure is not the end. All we can do is make adjustments and always try again.
Now that school is back in, it is an excellent time to get back on schedule. Keep following me for our back-to-school schedule and family rules!
How did you do this summer? Did you follow any summer rules that you could keep or not keep? I would love to hear how everyone’s summer went.
Don’t Allow Sleepovers? Have a Late Night Instead!
I remember having sleepovers when I was young. I would have them with friends or neighbors once or twice a month. I would be so nervous when asking my mom if I could have a sleepover. When she said yes, I would get so excited that I would jump up and down. It was always so much fun to have them. We would stay up late and be silly. Those were the days!
Times have changed since then. When my husband and I started having kids, we decided not to allow our kids to have sleepovers. They can have sleepovers at their cousins’ or grandparents’ houses, or their cousins can sleep at our house, but we don’t allow them to have a sleepover with friends. We have our reasons, but I will not get into that.
Instead of having sleepovers, we let our kids have a “late night.” I am guessing that you may be asking what a late night is. A late night is when our kids invite their friends to come to our house from about 6 pm to about 10-11 pm. They have dinner, watch a movie, play board or card games, and have a good time full of silliness and laughter.
Late-Night Activity Ideas
EAT FOOD, LOTS OF FOOD – We always have food at our late nights. We are foodies, so we always have food when people are over. We usually order pizza for the kids, but there have been a few occasions when the kids have made homemade pizzas. They enjoy making their own pizzas. We also have snacks for when they play board or card games or watch a movie.
PLAY BOARD OR CARD GAMES – The kids love to play board and card games during their late nights. If the weather is warm, they will go outside and play yard or night games. We will set up a volleyball net and let them play volleyball or whatever they want to do with that. If the weather is colder, they will play card games inside. There are so many different card games you can have them choose from. A few of the card games that our kids enjoy playing with their friends are:
- Moose Master
- Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza
- Cover Your Assets
- Five Crowns
- Karma
WATCH A MOVIE – We always have good intentions in having them watch a movie, but we make sure it is kid-appropriate. It seems like they will always start watching a movie, but then they start talking and goofing off and never finish it! For some reason, they still insist on watching a movie every time!
OTHER FUN ACTIVITIES – You can also do other fun activities. The last time my oldest daughter had a late night, they dipped and decorated strawberries. When my son has a late night, he and his friends like to play video games the entire time. It is one of the times I let them play without a time limit. You can have them paint their nails, play laser tag, decorate cupcakes or cookies, or play night games. It doesn’t need to be elaborate; keep it simple.
A late night might seem more overwhelming than having a sleepover, but it isn’t. It is such a good opportunity for the kids to socialize with their friends and for you to get to know the friends your kids hang out with.
The kids always ask to have late nights because they enjoy them, and I don’t feel like they are missing out on anything by not having a sleepover.
What do you do in your family? If you don’t have sleepovers like us, what do you do to let your kids hang out with their friends? Do you have any ideas other than a late night? If you do, I would love to hear them. Please leave a comment; I would love to hear from you!
