Crystal’s challenge today is to post a Frugal Friday tip along with a family fun time for our “Making Your Home a Haven” challenge. We are to post about what our family does which doesn’t cost a lot of money, but brings us closer together.
First of all, we always eat dinner around the dinner table. Yes, there are occasions that we eat out, but we always do so as a family and 99% of the time we eat at home around our dining room table. No TVs, no radio, just our family spending time together.
As far as recreation, in the summer we take walks, go hiking, or play basketball in our driveway. Now that the evenings are getting shorter and colder, we’ve moved our family time inside. We now have game nights, movie nights, or we work a thousand piece puzzle. For the most part, in the evening when we are all at home bedrooms are off limits. We prefer to spend the time together. Children are a gift from God, but these gifts grow, they mature, and they eventually (depending on God’s will for their life) leave your home to begin families of their own. The time we have with our children is but a brief moment, we need to cherish it and make the most of it.
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I love eating dinner around the table every night too! The other night we had a great movie (which is so rare that’s why this was such a special occasion!) and we decided to have pizza and watch the movie. It was just not the same! I so missed our time at the table! We won’t do that again!!
I think it is so important to eat around the table for as long as you can. You are right–these precious gifts grow way too fast! Mine are 17, 21, 23 and 25 and on different schedules between work and school. It is rare we can schedule dinner at the same time, so it is a big ‘occasion’ if we all can manage to go out together for a meal. Alas, it doesn’t happen often. That’s why it’s so important to do this when the kids are still young enough. I had one big rule, though–no bad words. Dinner isn’t the time to dress down Billy because he did something or tell Sally she really needs to step it up in the math department. It is a time to share the day’s adventures and have interesting discussions.
A few weeks back I treated my 17 year old son and two of his friends to IHOP for dinner. You haven’t lived until you’ve joined in a conversation with some lively, interesting teenagers, LOL!