This is a spin off of the Banana Splits for Dinner thread.
That bittersweet story really got me thinking. We really never know how long we have with our loved-ones. Let's make some great memories! Laurie A. posted some great non-traditional activities for families to make memories together...Now I'm wanting to make a list of awesome stuff to do with my family.
So far, I have what Laurie put:
-Picnics late at night during school nights
-Movies all day long eating junk at home, or going from theater to theater all day long.
-All sleeping in the living room as though we were camping.
-Eating ice cream for breakfast, or dinner.
-Pizza for breakfast.
-Cooking bacon and eggs on the BBQ after camping in our own backyard
-Getting up super early to see planets through the telescope (or the sunrise)
-Going to breakfast at a diner in our PJ's
So, please...what would you add to this list?
ETA: I couldn't agree more on the serendipity! Doing things "spur of the moment" is awesome. Last Friday I came home early and joined the kids at the pool. Afterwards, instead of going right home, we went and got ice cream cones from the local soft-serve place. I had a root-beer cone. YUM! Life IS short....eat dessert first!
I would add O. giant dose of...SERENDIPITY!
My favorite thing to do is, as we're driving, and someone mentions "Hmmm....what's that statue?" or "Where does THAT road go?" or "When will we have time to xyz?" is to get ON IT! Stop, get out, check out the object, activity, building, destination, etc.
We had a tradition wherein you'd get to have left over ice cream cake for breakfast after a birthday.
Also, back in the 70s, when air conditioning cost an arm and a leg, I remember having a picnic on the floor of the living room, corn on the cob and everything.
My husband said, after his parents divorced, his mom let each of the kids have a turn at deciding what christmas dinner was going to look like. Instead of the traditional roast, one decided on a curry supper, the youngest chose ice cream.
popcorn fights.
spitting watermelon seeds over the back deck.
getting up early and digging worms for fishing.
Oh my, I absolutely love this post. Thank you for getting me thinking on that track!
I'm SO doing something like this with my girls and hubby this weekend!!
I'm positive we will go eat at Denny's at midnight in our PJ's!!
Awww. Okay, well I'll put some things I remember from my childhood...
Friday night pizza and watching ABC's Disney Movie of the week
Making all kinds of foods from scratch
driving all the way to Louisburg Cider Mill just to get fresh cider donuts in the fall
Mom making my birthday cupcakes to take to school
Staying at the movies all day long (love that one and can't wait to do it with my kids!!!)
Watching Princess Di get married (I tried to recreate this with William and Kate but my 3 y/o was so NOT interested! ;(
Things we do with our kids...
blueberry picking every summer
we started camping this year
making cookies
carving jack-o-lanterns each Halloween
making themed meals/desserts for as many holidays as I can muster!
all playing in the pool together on hot days!
LOVE this post. LOVE IT. It is so true we cannot be strict rule people all the time.
1. Staying in pjs all day sometimes (not often!)
2. Eating dessert before dinner
3. Walking to the ice cream store and getting cones
4. Family movie night when we're all snuggled on the couch and eat dinner together there and snacks.
5. family bike rides
6. s'mores for no reason! Just because!
7. reading together in mom and dad's bed
8. burying each other in the sand at the beach
9. going to 4th of july fireworks
10. playing in our pool
11. doing a "sandwich" where mom and dad are the bread and the kids are the butter, peanut butter and the jelly in our bed. It's one of the key reasons we have a king sized bed! LOL!
12. Spaceship rides into bed
13. laughing about poopy jokes (not all the time!)
14. making lots of food with the kids from scratch - meatballs, cookies, cakes, soups etc etc.
yayayayayaya!
This is a great post!!! I love all the ideas so far and can't wait for my kids to get a little older for late night movies and Denny's in our pajamas!!
We enjoy water fights - we have a small pool and all use cups and splash water on/at each other and try to get it into each other's cups!
We play frisbee together.
My kids and I go to my parents house every Sunday after church and spend the day there!
These are not 'family' memories but 1x a month hubby and I each try to take our child out for an evening together. Since son is still young, he often gets uninterrupted time with hubby or myself at home playing while hubby will take daughter to the movies and I'll take her to get pedis/out for dinner.
We started a tradition this past Christmas of takign the kids to the park on Christmas Eve. We are so busy and on the go Christmas Eve night through Christmas night that it was nice to take an hour and just play, be outside, etc!
I like the pizza for breakfast and ice cream for dinner idea!
We cook and bake a lot together!
I would do a little less celebration of junk food (although I think living room picnics are great fun), and do the things that my son remembers - museum visits, hikes, finding frogs in the pond, building ant farms in a clear container in the back yard, flying kites, collecting snails and minnows at the beach, collecting shells and gluing them to a painted board to make a design or picture, building elaborate networks of trenches in the sand, combining toys to make complex set-ups (such as Brio trains and Hot Wheels and space ships into a huge set-up, which uses a lot of creativity), scavenger hunts, exploring a nearby city or historic site, making really awesome Halloween costumes and doing fun pumpkin carvings, putting on plays, building forts, going camping for real, telling knock-knock jokes, doing Mad Libs, reading together, family movie nights, "upside down days" with dinner for breakfast and vice versa, collecting rocks and painting them, then using them or giving them as paperweights, making picture frames for school pix for Grandma by using macaroni or foam shapes on a matte or cheap wooden frame, making birdhouses or bird feeders, making your own holiday decorations (which you then get out every year to reinforce the memories), creating photo albums and scrapbooks, telling stories about the grandparents that the kids didn't know, making a family photo wall, tearing up magazines and making collages....gee, that's all I can think of right now!
