Family Movie Night (and a Giveaway)
As you can imagine, this summer has been a little on the chaotic side for our family. Between flying straight to Vegas from vacation in the Outer Banks, to three weeks living with Bart’s sister, then six weeks with my parents, and now six weeks in Arizona, it’s definitely had a touch of the crazy.
Bart and I have made major efforts to keep the girls’ lives as calm and regular as possible during this time so that they don’t feel totally unmoored. They have regular nap and quiet times every afternoon, and they are in bed at 7 on the dot pretty much every night. We go to church on Sunday, visit the library and IKEA weekly, and have regular meals as a family.
And we also reinstated Friday Movie Nights once we were all back in the same house.
In my usual fashion, we’ve kept things very simple. I know myself well enough to realize that if I make it complicated, I’ll just quit, so it’s pretty streamlined.
We have (homemade) pizza for dinner, and then we have (not homemade) ice cream while we watch our movie.
Just before seven, we pause the movie, get both girls completely ready for bed and put Ani down. Then we finish the movie with Ella and she goes immediately to bed once the movie is finished (since she basically never stays up late, even by 7:45, she’s usually asking “how long until this movie is done?”).
Sometimes, if I’m feeling very nice (or I want to get things rolling earlier), we’ll let the girls eat on a picnic blanket and start the movie during dinner instead of waiting until after.
. . . a Poloraid camera with film, and a puzzle, a bottle, a book, a changing pad and the biggest box of styrofoam peanuts you’ve ever seen.
Pampers is giving away another identical gift basket with all those goodies to one reader. Yippee! (Also, save the box and peanuts – my girls have been playing in it daily for two weeks. We may be a little starved for toys around here).
Love this giveaway – Family movie nights are the best – but now that our kids range in age from 8-18 months – finding one movie that EVERYONE agrees on can be tougher! 🙂
My favorite family routine is our Sunday barbecue. My husband has been perfecting his burger patty recipe for years and he loves trying new things with it. Plus, it's the only time he ever cooks and I love that I don't have to plan anything or work very hard on Sunday, just slice up some fruit or throw a side dish together, or maybe make homemade buns if I'm feeling adventurous. We grill all year long, even in the deep freeze of winter. Our kids love it almost as much as we do and I don't think they would know what to do with themselves if we ever ate something else for Sunday dinner.
In the fall/winter, we also do family movie night and my boys love it! Another family routine is game night with board / card games.
We spend the 20 minutes (or more!) leading up to quiet time reading stories, and I love it. We also have a pretty simple FHE routine (read a chapter from the comic book scriptures, sing a song, play a game) that the boy is so enthusiastic about that I have to enjoy it too.
I have that same problem with ice cream scoops — the scoop just doesn't stand up to the ice cream!
We have a Saturday afternoon movie tradition that my girls (and us) love!
I love the idea of having the same food one day each week (Taco Tuesday or whatever), but I just can't think of anything that I want to eat that regularly. Even pizza.
watching movies on netflix!
We also do homemade pizza and movie nights. In the summer, I give my kids long naps and let them stay up late enough to watch the movie on the projector outside in the backyard. It's like camping… Only more glamorous.
Good timing for you for that gift basket!! I got really excited about possibly implementing this tradition (pizza, ice cream, and movies are basically the holy trinity of activities), but then I remembered Fuqua Friday. Maybe a Saturday night tradition then 🙂
We do Friday night movie night too! Also with homemade pizza! My kids love it, to quell the fighting, each member of our family has a Friday to pick out whatever (kid friendly) movie they'd like to watch. If it's a special request we go to the library and see if we can find it. Tonight Belle and the Enchanted Christmas (my Tessa has been asking to watch this for months and we finally got it at the library, who care that's it's the middle of the summer!)
Watching movies together!
Reading about 20 books before bedtime 🙂
My favorite routine is making a good breakfast with the works on Saturday mornings.
Going for a walk through the neighborhood after dinner. Wears my son out and gets us all a little exercise 🙂
We really are quite good at having dinner together most nights. I love that we've done so well with that!
We always eat dinner together as a family, it makes such a difference!
Ella has the best facial expressions, bar none.
We've always had pizza & garlic bread Saturdays. Lately we've been adding a viewing of the old Next Generation Star Trek episodes into the mix. In an effort to nerdify our children. It is so awesomely nostalgic as some of my best memories are watching that show with my dad.
Well, it's just me here, but one of my routines is I like to have people over for dinner on Sunday nights. (I hope I win — I want that camera!!!).
We end our weekend with a standing date with friends for dinner, it's a nice low key way to round out busy weekends and get the week off to a good start.