Keeping the Lord's Day Holy: 20+ Simple and Free Ideas for Family Dates

More than a month ago, I realized that my family had somehow been letting too much of regular life creep back into our Sundays. As a result, Our Lord's Day was no longer consistently being set apart and kept Holy as the Catechism explains it should be.

Sure, my family was still participating in Mass each Sunday, but, pre- and post-Mass, work, errands, chores, and the like were spilling over from the rest of our week.

More and more, we were failing to ensure "sufficient rest and leisure to cultivate (our) familial, cultural, social, and religious lives."
This was not good, I knew. We needed to amend our ways. and return to keeping Sabbath on the Lord's Day.

Re-instituting a family tradition of family dates on Sundays became one of our first steps towards reclaiming the Holy Day in our family.

This tradition is simple:

On Sundays when we do not have a pre-planned engagement, we set aside two or more hours of time for a family date.

Each week, we rotate through who in our family gets to decide what we do for the date, and, we encourage one another to keep our dates cost-free and focused on some combination of faith, family, friendship, beauty, nature, connection, charity, and relationship.

Family dates are that simple!

How we fell away from the tradition, I am not sure, but I am certainly happy we've re-embraced it! 
If you'd like to initiate a Sunday Family Dates tradition with your family, too, here are some ideas for simple dates that we've enjoyed in the past:

1. Go on a picnic.
2. Invite friends for a walk in the woods.
3. Get together with others for a cook out.
4. Enjoy a family read aloud while having treats.
5. Host a meal for friends or family.

6. Nibble on popcorn with a movie time at home.
7. Build a fire and experiment with camp cooking.
8. Visit friends and family.
9. Play board games and cards.

10. Take a hike.

11. Create art together.

12. Volunteer together.
13. Enjoy outdoor living history, community, and nature events.
14. Cook and bake together.

15. Build a fort or hut.

16. Go for a bike ride.
17. Play catch.
18. Head to the beach

19. Have a cook-off.

20. Enjoy a playground.
21. Or, as we did today, support one another's hobbies, while spending time with friends.

Yep, we went to see Daddy join a friend from church in playing out. 

Have a blessed and happy Holy Day!

Field Trip to the Firehouse – Confirmation of Progress with SPD

During Fire Safety Week, our local fire department hosts a wonderful free family day that we thoroughly enjoy.  Or, I should say, that we thoroughly enjoy when our oldest son is able to stay regulated.

For Sensory Processing Disorder and fire house visits are not always a good mix.  The sights, sounds, smells, tastes and tactile input involved with a fire department open house can prove over-stimulating.  In years past, such sensory experiences put our son into overload at times, resulting in a hodge podge of bolting, melt downs and similar dampers on an otherwise delightful day.

Not this year! 

This year, more times than one, I was the one taken aback, not by over-stimulation, but by the satisfying realization of how far our son has come.

He never used to be able to tolerate getting his picture taken or his fingers printed for safety I.D.’s.  This year, he got into it.

Demonstrations, such as cooking safety ones, used to over-stimulate him.  Now, they just provide an opportunity for him to ask a zillion questions!

Tearing him away from safety videos used to bring on meltdowns.  Now, he comes and goes from the video peacefully, using the video, to some degree, as a regulation tool.

Police dog demonstrations sometimes caused a form of stimming (which, at the time, I did not even know was stimming).  Now, he can take a front row with his sister to watch and learn.

Face painting used to be a tactile nightmare.  Now he is an old hat at it and, where he used to take forever to say what he wanted on his face – sitting almost like a deer in headlights even before the painting began, even after asking for his face to be painted – he now walks right up and challenges volunteers to paint some of his favorite things, like Star Wars blasters and light sabers. And – bonus – he'll actually look directly at the camera for a picture afterward.  (Eye contact with peopel and camera was a huge challenge in the past.)

He used to need Daddy to hold him during fire demonstrations, now he volunteers Daddy to go put the fires out.

And, he used to come home so in need of huge amounts of sensory regulation activities that directly involved us that the other children were unfortunately ignored for a few moments by at least one parent.  Now, he joins Sister, Brother and us in saving our house from pretend fires.

Due to his sensory needs, our son used to get the lion’s share of our attention at family days like the fire house open house if Mike and I failed to make a concentrated effort to ensure his siblings got their fair share of Mommy and Daddy time.  Now, without so much orchestrating, everyone has their special moments, both one-on-one and together, and we all enjoy the day that much more for it.

Oh, what gratitude is in my heart today, not just for our local fire department’s generous open house, but also for the opportunity it provided for me this year to see that my son has made great progress and continues to do so.  A free family day of fun and a hope-filled perspective.  It doesn’t get much better than that!  Thank you, Lord, for an ideal Sabbath family day.

 This post is being shared at Heavenly Homemakers Gratituesday.

Watching Videos as a Sunday Morning Tradition?

Preparing for Mass with a Holy Heroes Adventure Guides Video

{NOTE:  Affiliate links are included in this post .}

It might seem odd that we, a family that consciously limits screen time for our children, have been making a habit of watching videos each Sunday morning.  Yet it is true. 

For weeks now, some time between breakfast and Mass on Sunday mornings, we bring our laptop to the table and let the kids glue their eyes to the screen.

Why?

Because we have found Holy Heroes Mass Prep Videos like this one:



Each Sunday, the Holy Heroes Adventure Guides offer a free, short video.  These help center our children's attention on the Gospel and, on good weeks, encourages them to pay more attention in church as they listen for the readings shared in the videos to be repeated during the celebration of Mass.

SPD Connection

In keeping with my promise to honor National Sensory Processing Disorder Awareness Month this month, I wanted to make three notes about videos and Mass with our son.

1.  Videos.  Our son LOVES them and would gladly watch them for hours on end.  However, he is also often over-stimulated by them.  As you can glean from the photo at the top of this post, where our son is standing with his hands behind his head, our son tends to watch videos with his whole body.  He often stands, jumps up and down, wiggles and bounces.  Plus, since he was quite young, during particularly stimulating segments of videos, he often reaches his arms forward and open and closes his fingers almost as if he is trying to repeatedly and quickly manipulate a puppet's mouth.  (This, as we learned in the past year, is actually a stimming behavior.)

2.  Heavy Work.  Regardless of whether a video causes our son to stim or not, we have learned that if our son is to remain regulated and if we are all to remain more peaceful, we have to bracket his video viewing time with active time.  When we fail to ensure heavy work (running, jumping, lifting, pushing and other activities that work the proprioceptive system) before and/or after screen time, our son's dysregulation quickly becomes apparent.

3.  Pre-Mass Strategy.  Mass always goes better when we take the time to encourage our son to have more than just a quick with a good dose of heavy work.  When we budget 15 minutes or more for heavy work activities before Mass, we usually discover his behavior at church benefits. If only we would remember to do this more often...

What special treats or favorite traditions have become a part of your family's Sunday mornings?

 

(If you receive this post via email and cannot see the linky, be sure to actually click over to the blog to read browse the rich catalog of ideas there.  We also want to thank you for clicking through affiliate links if you wish to purchase anything.  Doing so costs you nothing extra, but it blesses us.  Thanks!)

In Honor of National Poetry Month: Bag a Poem and The Ideal

Need a quick, fun, tactile idea for poetry writing?  Please check out my Bag a Poem Post over at OJTA, where I look at bags and other household items through SPD Lenses.

Also, as I head into the weekend, when I know I will enjoy some time with our family's Sabbath Commitment, I wanted to share another poem that I wrote as a part of Jennie Linthorst's wonderful LifeSPEAKS workshop.  This one is about my original dream of marriage and family, which has come partly to fruition, as evidenced by a sunny family hike with three gifts of joy last weekend:

Jack, so content to be headed out for his first "long mountain" hike.  May he always take comfort that our Father will carry him through the more challenging spots in his life, just like his earthly Daddy did on the trails.

It was all we could do to keep up with "Cheetah" Luke, who kept racing ahead of us with excitement.  Thankfully, he stopped to shout out with joy at times, too.  May he always remember to pause for a moment of rest and praise!

When we saw this picture of Nina after last week's hiking adventure, we couldn't help but to smile.  It looks like she is talking to angels.  May the Spirit work in all our kids to help their ideals match God's!

The Ideal

Years I waited

Long years

To meet “that man” who was meant for me.

To be gifted a child,

Or two

Or four

Or more

However many was in The Plan

But once I met him

The dream became blurry

I was told that children may not be possible

Love?

Yes

Love for our own child?

Maybe not

All I could do was pray

So, pray I did

With faith I waited

Praise God

This time not so long…

Sure enough,

Soon enough

You were there

A blessing growing within me

Once again

I could dream freely

A warm house of tradition

Sweetness and silliness

Love and laughter

Friends, Family, Faith and Fitness

Children playing

Laughing

Helping

Sharing the joys of Home

Freshly baked cookies

Friends dropping by

Vibrant family gatherings

A place

Safe

To learn

To grow

To treasure always

To kick up our feet

Or snuggle in

After a day at the beach

Or hiking in the mountains

Visiting

Volunteering

Finding the miraculous in the mundane bits of life

And the spectacular in savored moments

as family

My family

Our family

The family I prayed for since I was but a little girl

Thank you, Lord, for making part of my ideal your reality for me.  Please direct me in training my three awesome blessings up well so we may navigate the trails of this world as a path straight to You!