Polls and Tips for Family Life

If there are six apples and you take away four, how many apples do you have? Four.

The more you take away from me, the bigger I get. What am I? A hole.

Looking for seashells is a classic beach activity for kids that mine love to do every single time we go. I usually set a limit for how many they can bring home each time, and have learned to designate a special jar or mesh bag as the "seashell" holder to avoid creating an entire beach at home!

My kids LOVE using grabbers, and picking up litter at the beach is really and truly one of their favorite beach activities - helping the environment is just a bonus. I've gotten grabbers on Amazon, at the dollar store, and at Costco, and they all seem to hold up about the same (which is not all that long, unfortunately), so I suggest buying the cheapest you can find. The grabbers with a trigger rather than a squeeze handle seem easiest for little hands to use.

Granola bars are so easy to travel with, and are a hearty road trip snack that still tastes like a treat.

Grapes are good healthy road trip snacks as they hold up much better than most other fresh fruit while traveling. If you've got little ones, you can cut them after washing to avoid a possible choke hazard.

What did the shark say when it ate the clown fish? Tastes funny.

Why does a duck have feathers? To cover his butt quack

Surge protector

Basic OTC medications and first-aid kit, like Tylenol, Advil, Zyrtec, Benadryl, bandaids, Neosporin, hydrogen peroxide.

Knock Knock. Who's there? I eat mop. I eat mop who?

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Doris. Doris who? Doris locked. Open up, please!

Some of my favorite things to do with my 11-yr old daughter are: take an evening/sunset walk through the neighborhood, ride our bikes to Starbucks, go look at cats for adoption at Petco, go get pretzels from Auntie Anne's and walk around the mall, go to Sephora, to to Ulta (we like to look at Ulta and Sephora and smell perfumes - we don't always buy anything), go to Disneyland, go to Magic Mountain, do arts & crafts, bake brownies.

I've loved picking a different TV series to watch alongside my daughter over the years. It's a fun and relaxing activity we both enjoy, and also results in plenty of fun conversations when we're not watching it! As she's gotten older, it's been especially cool to start watching shows with her that I've long loved, or to discover new favorite shows to binge watch together.

Popsicle tag is the swimming pool game version of freeze tag. The player who is "it" tries to tag all the other players, who freeze in place with their hands in the air - like a popsicle! - whenever they are tagged. Players "unfreeze" other players by swimming under their legs.

Categories - pool style! - is a variation on pool tag, where the player who is "it" stands outside the pool, facing away from it, while all the other players remain inside the pool next to them. "It" chooses a category - colors, animals, states, Harry Potter characters, etc - and all the other players have to pick something from that category, without telling anyone what they pick. "It" starts to call out names/things related to the category, and if a player's selection gets called, they have to try and swim to the other end of the pool before "it" hears them and jumps in to tag them.

We do BTS shopping at Target. I buy the Gift Cards when they are on sale for 20% off and save my 5% birthday coupon for it!

For basic school supply items that you end up needing to repurchase every year, buy in bulk and keep the extra on hand to draw from in the future. Costco often has great deals on post-its, pens, notebooks, etc during back to school time.

Popcorn. We have a silicone microwave popper that my tween and teen use on their own when they feel like having a snack.

I always have cheese zits for on the go, juice boxes, sliced fruits of their liking and also yogurt packets . Even a favorite cereal of theres put in a zip lock baggie.

We measure each kid's height on their birthday. Instead of marking directly on the wall, we have a wooden ruler growth chart that we've hung up and can take with us when we move.

We do family pizza and movie night every Friday, and it is something that we still look forward to after quite a few years. We all take turns being the one who gets to choose a movie. This mostly eliminates arguments about what we are watching.

Set up a little frisbee golf course in the backyard and use a laundry basket as the target. The player with the fewest tosses to get their frisbee into the basket wins!

We recently discovered creeking from our park center super fun and free lots of activities too. I found it on the events tab on Facebook I’ve never done anything like it before but it was fun for my tot and myself .

If your daughter's school hosts a father daughter dance, don't miss out on it! It's one of the highlights of the whole school year for us, and there's the bonus of having the dads get to know each other better, too.

We had a pretty well-stocked costume bin when my daughter was little, and one of her favorite father daughter activities was dressing up with her dad in crazy getups. She thought it was a riot to see him in her dress-up clothes and accessories.

Picking weeds outside, watering flowers/plants/herbs and raking leaves is a chore that my kids find fun. (Added bonus if you buy their own gloves/watering can).

Clearing the dishes after a meal, loading and unloading the dishwasher, and making sure that the dogs have their food and water.

I put together little gifts (think Dollar bin) wrapped up in bags with a time on them. My kids look forward to these gifts and it helps to pass the time on long trips!

I like to spread out the distribution of any new activities or road trip toys over the course of the trip, and find that my kids enjoy them longer this way. If they start the trip with unlimited access to all of the new stuff, they blow through it pretty quickly and there's not as much to look forward to.

I don’t have the time or energy to make extra meals so if they don’t like what I make, my kids have a choice to have peanut butter on bread (PB is a complete protein) so at least it’s something! They are asked to sit at the table with the meal I’ve prepped. Sometimes, their curiosity gets to them and they end up trying (and liking) what I’ve made 🙌🏻

When it comes to picky eaters I try to veer away from making multiple meals only because I want my children to actually try something before just deciding "they just don't like" something. I have also found different ways to make meals and hide certain ingredients/foods they may not like and it definitely works. There are also times when I decide to "cave in" and just give that specific meal just to assure my picky eater is actually eating. Either way I'm learning to just be patient because children's appetites or what they may like changes as they grow.

We have a binder of "greatest hits" recipes that we use almost exclusively for our family dinner rotation. My weekly meal planning involves picking recipes from the binder each weekend to meal plan for the week ahead, and I go to the grocery store once. I just have too many new recipe failures to bother wasting my time with trial and error on our busy weeknights. I'd rather cook something tried and true, and my kids would much rather eat something they already know they love. On the rare occasion that I cook something new and the family loves it, it gets printed out and added to the binder.

My husband and I try to plan 3-4 meals for the coming week before the weekend is out, so we can make a plan for grocery shopping and actually cooking. We often invite the kids to each pick one meal for the week as well - they tend to eat it better when they've been involved in the planning in some way!

When they’re young, I think letting kids play a little bit or walk around before the food arrives helps them sit more calmly in the high chair when it’s time to eat. Of course, feeling comfortable letting them play is a challenge! So even though we don’t typically eat early meals, sometimes going to a restaurant earlier in the evening or lunch time avoids the rush. I think just having a little extra space with fewer people can make the entire experience calmer and totally worth the off hours!

I always try to have something in my bag to entertain the kids quietly when they get bored. The paper kids menus and crayons they hand out at many restaurants often work great for a while, but books, a few bristle blocks, or wax sticks are also nice to have on hand for continued entertainment!