Family Time in the Fall Season Together With Leaves, Bonfire and Parade

I pride myself in having a very close knit family life, being close with my children has always been of high importance to me. One of the biggest ways families these days lose that connection is by placing too high of an importance on electronics. While I don’t have any real set-in-stone rules for electronics, because the four kids tend to balance it pretty well on their own. If the time comes, I do have limits inside of my head. My middle son, Aj, really only can handle about half hour of video game play while other days he can’t handle any. I take each day one at a time, but I always find creative ways to spend quality time together as a family.

We have four very different, yet similar, children in this household. We work hard to ensure that we do things as a family that involves something everyone can enjoy. One thing I tell the children is that “we may not be doing something you like right now, but it’s important to your sibling to do this. Next time we will do something you prefer. It will all eventually balance out in time”. That is the key to a successfully bonded family; balance.  This is not to say that each day, or even week, will balance out perfectly, but so as long as each of the four children are happy, and seem to have their needs met, then I feel we are doing something right.

There was one day where the little one wanted to be outside, and it was a pretty decent Fall weather day, so we went outside to rake up some leaves so we could jump in them. Little did we know that our jumping in leaves idea would lead the teenager and youngest child burying each other in leaves, and even burying me in leaves. This was a super awesome moment with the oldest and youngest!

My middle son had his friend over and I had told them they had about fifteen minutes left on game time then had to come outside to do something fun together. I am huge on not allowing my son and his friend to spend the whole time on electronics, and so they gladly came outside and jumped in leaves together. The smile on their faces was worth every moment of kicking them off those video games!

Recently our town had homecoming weekend and since we have two girls in middle school, we figured that taking them to the bonfire as well as the homecoming parade was important. We had such a great time at the bonfire, I took the older girls and my youngest son while my middle son stayed home with Lee.

As you can see, we do a heck of a lot as a family unit. While sometimes we split the kids up, because they don’t always want to do the same things, we overall do our best to ensure we are spending quality time together or apart in groups if necessary. Each of these four children in this home know they can trust in us adults to raise them right and to take into consideration the needs for their social life too. Family is being there for each other, always, even when you want to knock someone out.

Spending quality time with your family and children doesn’t require a whole lot of time on the clock, it just requires your undivided attention in that short period of time together.

Family is not about always agreeing nor always smiling, it is about the feeling at the end of the day that you get, knowing that you wouldn’t trade your life for anything else! Family is hard, keeping that bond going takes hard work from all parties involved in the family unit!