Day Four: Make Time for Family

Don't think you're the only one stressing out about about your crazy, hectic, and event filled life. We all have so much going on and there are always things we have to juggle. As the new year begins, think about the people in your life who are most important, your family. Here are some fun suggestions on ways to spend your time with the people that matter to you most.

• You have a dance lesson on Thursday at 5pm and your SAT tutor is coming at 2pm on Saturday. What do you do to remember? Generally speaking, most people write their appointments and lessons down on a calendar or a planner as a reminder. What about your family? If scheduling a time to eat dinner together on designated days is what you need to do, pencil them in too! Talk to your family about scheduling a specific day(s) of the week to sit down for an old fashioned family style dinner. Its important to spend time relaxing together after long and stressful days of commitments. 

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• Already eat dinner together on the daily, but you find yourself eating as quickly as you can to rush back to your other commitments? Establish a routine for your dinners. Go around the table and share something you learned or a funny story from your day. Play a game! My family (A's family) likes to play 'Celebrity', a game where each person writes the name of a celebrity on a post it and puts it on someone else's forehead so that person can't see which celebrity they were assigned. Then, each person has to ask the other family members yes or no questions about their assigned celebrity in an effort to guess who they've been assigned. 

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• Assign a "family day" of the week. Pick a day in which you can pick a fun activity to do together. Whether you enjoy hiking or watching movies, pick a day of the week where each family member can pick an activity for the whole family to participate in together. Gotta love family bonding. 

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• Does your family have a favorite TV show? Instead of running off to your respective rooms to watch the show, gather together in the living room to watch together. Make it fun by making popcorn or sweet treats to eat while watching. 

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• For those of you who are away at college or boarding school, or have already graduated college and moved away, it doesn't hurt to shoot your family members back at home a daily text message, email, or phone call! Being far away from family is hard enough. A phone call, text, or email to catch up on each others lives is always a great idea. Skype or Ichat is also a terrific way to keep in touch! Video chatting is seriously one of the greatest inventions of our time.

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Just make family bonding fun! Cherish the moments you have with them. Ultimately, you can change your clothes, you can change your hair, and you can even change your friends, but you can't change your family.

xoxo,
A+C