Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Family Tradition: #familyselfies

Long before we had kids, our good friends Elaine and Clement thoughtfully gifted us a book called "The Book of New Family Traditions: How to Create Great Rituals for Holidays and Every Day" by Meg Cox.  I love having this book on my shelf as good reference for ideas aside from Pinterest (because sometimes I just want to look at a book instead of a screen) ;) Anyways, it gives great ideas for every holiday, birthdays, special moments that happen in life (first day of school, graduation, etc.), and everyday rituals (chores, homework, etc.). Here's the link to the book which you can get on Amazon!




We never really put this book to use until we had kids and I've been finding myself thinking about family traditions for our to remember as they grow up. So the first family tradition that we've really had and was started by Dave is family selfies. 

When I went back to work part-time after having our first daughter, Dave had the responsibility of taking her to daycare every morning since I had to be at work by 7:30am. It always broke my heart to leave in the morning without seeing her because she was sleeping. So, Dave's genius idea was to send me a selfie of him and her in the morning! 
Love these 2 and look how young my oldest looks! 

Love the funny face selfies too!
These selfies always made my morning and reminded me of how blessed I am! So now that I am at home with the girls and Dave goes to work early in the morning before they wake up, I get to continue the family tradition with morning family selfies!





What are your family traditions? Would love to hear about different things that other families do! #familytraditions #familyselfies




Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Fishing Fun!

Hope everyone had a great Fourth of July weekend! It was a fun filled weekend for us! We started the weekend off with a fishing adventure with some good friends and their little girls! First time fishing for us and it was a lot of fun! We fished at Vasona Lake and turns out there are 2 days in the year where you can go fishing without a fishing license! So, we gave it a go and my "let's try new things attitude" hubby (Dave) got everything organized and ready for us to try fishing at the lake. So what did we get for our girls to go fishing? We found these 2 cute Frozen fishing poles which you can get on Amazon. I've included the link below. They were just the right size for my preschooler and toddler. Tip: before we actually went fishing, Dave had the girls practice casting and reeling in the fishing line out on our front lawn and let's just say we QUICKLY realized that the girls could only do 2 things: hold the fishing pole and reel in the line.

So..how did we do? I looked on my camera for some pictures and turns out we didn't take any pictures because honestly we were occupied with casting the fishing line for them into the lake, giving them the fishing pole to hold, teaching them to count to 10 as a lesson for waiting while fishing, and making sure they didn't fall into the lake while standing on the pier or on the lakeshore. Yes, that is what fishing is like with a preschooler and a toddler. Did we catch anything? NO. Did Dave or I get to use our own fishing poles? NO. Was it a successful first attempt at fishing with the kids? YES! Despite not having caught anything and we only did it for an hour, it was still a fun experience as a family and even more fun because we were in good company with our friends and their little girls!

After the fishing fun, we had ourselves a little picnic and then randomly decided to go pedal boating on the lake! Say what? Yes..pedal boating with a preschooler and a toddler IN. THE. LAKE. It's okay, they wore life vests. Was I worried about them falling in? Why of course! But, hey it's 4th of July weekend, we already tried something new earlier called fishing, and we had our friends who were going to do pedal boating too, so...why not? ;) I have to say..little kids with big life jackets on are the cutest thing!!

Pedal Boating on Vasona Lake!
Tip: place the little kid in the middle between the 2 adults OR place the 2 little kids in front with one adult pedaling!


Here is the link to the Frozen fishing poles that are perfect for little kids!