This is my first blog. I'm going to keep it short and sweet and talk about something near and dear to me: family time.
One of the things my family and I love to do is travel. Every year, we try to go somewhere exciting. The ONE THING we must do on that trip is have our family picture taken in front of something spectacular.
2018 we took our family portrait in front of the Eifel Tower. 2019: Hollywood sign. Even in 2020, the lost year, we managed to visit the Arc Encounter in Kentucky and get our photo taken in front of the massive Arc replica. While we were bummed our trip to Israel had been canceled, the Arc was spectacular and certainly could not be considered a consolation prize.
My wife and I decided we would fill our kids' lives with experiences, not things. Don't get me wrong, the kids have plenty of toys. But if you walk around our house, only one piece of common area furniture was purchased new. Our televisions are leftovers that family members didn't want anymore. One of them is a Vizio my brother and I purchased together in 2007. It's now in my oldest child's room.
What kids will remember when they're grown is the time you spent with them, and not the useless shit that breaks or gets boring after three months. My son has a Hot Wheels contraption that he played hard with...for about two weeks during Christmas break before the motor failed to propel any more cars around the loop. What he still talks about are the Nutella waffles and crepes he got to eat after the haunted tour in London last year, and the water slides in Greece in 2021. He looks at the pictures we took in 2017 at the Garden of the Gods and cliffside dwellings and he enjoys the memories even though he wasn't old enough to remember them.
Our youngest often cries at the pictures all over our walls from pre-2018 because we didn't take her. We remind her she wasn't born yet, but that we did have her with us because she was alive in Mommy's tummy. This satisfies her momentarily...until she sees the time Mommy was pregnant for big brother in our 2015 trip to New York City, and she's not in our family picture "on top of the rock" with the Empire State Building in the background.
My Dad and I just got back from a business trip to Colorado. We didn't have anything to do the day we arrived, so we drove out to the Royal Gorge to hike, walk across the old bridge, and do the nearly 1,000-foot gondola ride over the Arkansas River. I didn't know this, but my Dad and his family had gone there back in 1978. My Grandparents are dead, but the memory lives on with him, and he's 60.
We don't shy away from bringing our kids places. They need to experience the world so that they can not only understand there's more than their closed-off little world in this life, but also better appreciate where they're from...even though the beaches on the Ionian Sea are gorgeous. This makes them good, seasoned travelers who don't throw fits on airplanes and can sit quietly in a movie theater. I'm always amazed at how much shit people will buy their kids, but never go do anything with them...not even a movie.
You get one go-around with your kids. That's it. By the time your child graduates high school, 90% of the time they'll ever spend with you in life is over. Be careful what you fill it with. Don't wait for that ever-elusive day when they're finally "old enough to do things." That's bullshit. Start early and they'll get "old enough" sooner rather than later. They'll remember those times, be happy with you for it, and be better adults because of it.
Comments