Hangin' Out with the Fam'

Some of my favorite memories growing up are just from, activities that my family did together. When I was little my dad would take me to Home Depot on Saturday mornings to get a hot dog from the hot dog stand. In high school my family started doing a fun family activity on Christmas Eve before the big family stuff. We did everything from hilarious board games to laser tag. We also had frequent movie nights and my parents strived to take us on vacations yearly. Although nothing will ever beat our Disney Vacation or the cruise we went on (our last big family vacation) one of my favorite vacations we had we didn’t even leave the metroplex. We stayed in a fancy hotel over Fourth of July and went to Hurricane Harbor and Six Flags. It was such a blast and we were only 30 minutes from home!

That just proves that families can have fun anywhere. They can build those relationships with one another and don’t even have to leave their home. In today’s culture, people stress about big and extravagant outings and vacations when in reality all children crave are experiences with the whole family.

I have been blessed to be able to travel a bit with Steven in our short three years of marriage. They have never been much, but they have been fun. Mostly they were road trips to California to visit his family, but now that we have our own child we looked for things to do with him.

While Steven has a normal 9-5 job now, I still consider us “poor college students” so we don’t have the money to go on extravagant adventures every weekend. We do still want to make sure that we are spending time together though. One of our favorite things to do is to go walk around the mall. Declan loves people watching and it’s something different. Going on walks around the neighborhood as a family is also a favorite past time. And of course, movie nights are a must for this movie coinsurer.

Even though we don’t have the money to go to things like the zoo on a weekly basis, we still make our own fun. It can even be as small as all of us going into Declan’s room and coming up with little games that have him in huge fits of giggles. We are anxiously awaiting the day though that he can play board games with us because we have a closet full of odd board games we can’t wait to introduce him to.

I feel like our little family goes to show that you don’t need money to have those wholesome recreational activities. Fun is what you make of it and for us, fun is where our little band of the Three Musketeers is.

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Widmer, M. A., & Taniguchi, S. T. (2016). Wholesome family recreation: Building strong families. In A. J. Hawkins, D. C. Dollahite, & T. W. Draper (Eds.), Successful marriages and families: Proclamation principles and research perspectives (pp. 225-236). Provo: Brigham Young University.