Celebrate the every day

Some days life gets too serious for us and we are so focused on the have-to-dos.  So we try to lighten things up.  When Emma was in kindergarten, I started looking up wacky holidays online.  I wrote down the ones that sounded fun or educational or gave me ideas for meals on the calendar.  We've been celebrating every day crazy holidays since then and love it.  It gives us an excuse to enjoy the day and spend extra quality time together.

We've celebrated some memorable ones lately including:

Bubble Wrap Day.  We made bubble wrap art.  Emma wanted to make hers look like stained glass so she colored it that way with markers and put it up to the window to enjoy it.  And we played a game to see who could pop the most bubbles on a sheet of bubble wrap in a certain amount of time.  Pop pop pop!

Super bowl.  That's really a holiday for us Americans, right?  I'm not into it (just ask Dave, he jokes I'm a little grumpy on that day) but Dave, Emma and Cal watched.  Lucy & I did make some gingerbread football cookies though to have that night.  She still calls herself my baker girl.  And Cov enjoyed helping, too.  

Mail Carrier Appreciation Day.  We left some hot chocolate and popcorn in the mail box with a card we made for our mail carrier, Amber.  This was very deserving as she has been facing some very crazy weather to get our mail to us each day.  She was so nice she wrote a thank you card back telling the kids how much that meant to her.  Things like this don't take much time, money or effort, but the feeling the kids got of doing something nice for someone else I hope will stick with them and they will look for ways to help and thank others.

Ice Cream for Breakfast Day.  One of the kid's favorite to date! Luckily it landed on a Saturday so they weren't dragging at school.  We had several kinds to pick from, they all wanted cookie dough.  I tried a little but couldn't do it.  I saved my ice-cream for later that night.  ;)

We also like to celebrate the kid's accomplishments.  As their piano teacher, this year as an incentive program, we've done "Mama Mia!  Let's practice the piano for pizza!"  Emma and Cal had opportunites to fill in pepperonis on paper pizzas by doing different challenges each week at their lesson.  Once they did this (and my other students) they got their very own pizza and we had a little party for them.  Yum!  They are doing great and getting better each week.  It's fun to hear them really get into practicing now and not whining as much about it.  :)

"Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children."                                            -Charles R. Swindoll 

More often than not, I'm sure lots of the deposits I'm making for my kids aren't the greatest, but this is one way I can make big deposits  in their memory banks and hope that some day they can cash in on these happy memories and make happy memories for their children.