Polls and Tips for Family Life

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!

Tupperwares or food containers.

A fan is a good call if your kid's dorm is not air conditioned.

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.

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.

A ping pong ball hunt is a fun pool game for kids who like a little competition. Number as many ping pong balls as possible, starting with 1 and going up to as many as you have - 25 to 30 work well. Divide players into two teams, give each a container for collecting the balls, then toss the balls into the pool and have players collect as many of them as they can. Add up the numbers on the balls to see who wins! You can introduce a bunch of variations on this game for fun, like only allowing players to collect a single ball at a time, or assigning teams to collect only certain balls (like odds/evens).

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.

Cheese sticks, Babybel, or any other pre-portioned cheese.

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!

The geocaching app is a huge hit with my kids! There is a free option, but the $6.99 option has more caches to find. My kids (7 and 9) have so much fun with this in our neighborhood and also parks and paths nearby!

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.

Eating dinner together isn't the most glamorous of family traditions, but we prioritize doing it as much as we possibly can! It's a built-in way to hear about everyone's day and connect as a family, even when we are all busy.

My husband and daughter get dressed up & go to the restaurant of her choice. They love this together time!

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.

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

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

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).

Putting away groceries is one chore that my teen and tween don't mind, because they like to check out the grocery haul when I bring it home.

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!

Download an audiobook and/or pick a podcast that's appropriate for your kids' ages and would be interesting to the adults, too.

Try making "build your own" meals. Put out a bunch of components and let each person pick and choose what they want. You're only making one meal, but it's customized for each person. We do build your own salads (greens and veggies, beans, chicken, cheese, croutons) or rice bowls (protein, rice, cheese, salsa, avocado, beans, mango) and these go over really well with my kids and their different food preferences. Picky eaters can enjoy their dinner "deconstructed" if they don't want their food touching.

Have your kids look at cook books or online recipes, write grocery lists, go shopping with you, let them pick out any produce item that they want to try. When kids are involved they are more apt to eat!

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!

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.

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!