Gift of a Day Family Tradition will be a great experience for your kids over the summer. Treat each child to their own special day with these fun ideas. Today we welcome Holly Ehle as a guest writer on Kreative in Life. She is excited to share with you this amazing idea her family has done for many years. Holly is a guru when it comes to family traditions.
Hello, friends! My name is Holly Ehle, and I am beyond thrilled to be doing a guest post today here on Kreative in Life! For those of you who don’t know me, I am a teacher-blogger at www.KindergartenConnections.com. I LOVE teaching, but I’m a momma too… and I will always view being a parent as my life’s most important work! On that note, I’m doing my best to squeeze every minute of special time with my own kiddos out of the summer!
Now, if you’ve ever read my blog or followed me on Instagram (@hollyehle) or Facebook (ehlekindergarten), you probably already know I’m a family tradition nut! I’m ALL about making memories and trying to be “intentional” as a parent. However, I’m human and as hard as I’ve tried, I just can’t manage to add hours to the day or extra days to the week…so I’ve had to be creative in the ways of creating family traditions. I have to find ways to make a BIG impact with the limited amount of time I seem to have. I think I’ve come up with quite a few pretty cool traditions that are “do-able” for parents with limited time, if I do say so myself!
Crystal knows all about my LOVE for developing family traditions and creating special memories with my family, and she asked if I’d be willing to share some of my ideas with you all. I was so honored and thrilled when she asked! So here goes….
One of my favorite summer traditions is what we call
“A Gift of a Day.”
I mean, really…Fewer things sound more delightful than spending a day doing exactly what we want, right?!! To our family, “The Gift of a Day” reminds us that sometimes we need to put our obligations and our work aside and just BE. We need to spend time with our loved ones, in our favorite place doing our favorite things, completely relaxing and forgetting about the hustle and bustle of our daily lives. “The Gift of a Day” is about making the most of every moment and approaching all that you do with purpose and love. It’s about keeping the people and activities we value the most in the forefront of our minds so that we don’t get distracted by all those things that aren’t important. It’s about feeling the satisfaction of truly giving and appreciating life around us and not taking one single thing for granted.
I may not be able to be “SUPERMOM” every day of the year….but this tradition allows me to be just that for a least one day! LOL And when you stop to think about it… If you consider how the events of a single day have changed the course of history… maybe, just maybe, giving your child a “Gift of a Day” may just change their lives forever too!
So this is how it works in my family. During the first few weeks of summer, we have each family member complete their own “perfect day” card. (We currently just have our kiddos fill them out…but every few years “we” {mom & dad} have filled them out too!) We have each person write down all of their favorite things, the things that they would love to experience packed in one day! (NOTE: This is NOT about going to fancy, expensive places or about buying things. This is about doing the simple things each kid loves, like spending time with their best friends in their favorite places, picking their favorite home-made meals, etc.) We then store each member’s card in his/her envelope on their specially assigned page in our “Gift of a Day” memory book.
This is what OUR little “Gift of a Day” keepsake book looks like:
Here is a peek at the inside. The first pic shows a little description of the tradition and the next two pics are examples of the inside pages. Note that the photos of my boys are glued onto actual envelopes that are glued onto the pages of the mini-scrapbook. The cream cards then slide into the envelopes for keepsake keeping!
This is just a small scrapbook that has an envelope glued to each page with a name on each. Nothing fancy….just simple and organized. {You could also just have a special envelope for each person that you keep in a pretty little storage box. The container doesn’t matter. It’s the memories that will!}
During the summer, we commit one day to giving each family member the “Gift of a Day.” We secretly plan these days without our children’s knowledge and then surprise them on the morning of their special day by decorating their door and other places around the house with simple posters and balloons. Even though we have done this for over seven years and the kiddos know their special days are coming, the look on their faces on their “Gift of a Day” mornings is priceless!
One of our favorite parts of this tradition is actually looking back in each of our envelopes at the past years’ “Gift of a Day” cards and photos. My kids get a big kick out of looking back at what they used to think was “the best thing ever” and giggling at those things!
Here are a few pics from some of our past
“Gift of a Day Family Tradition” activities….
Lexi’s 2008 Gift of Day: Spending a “girls” day with her best friend, big cousin and Mommy! We went to Build-A-Bear, went to the animal shelter and made some animal treat donations, and played with the animals waiting for homes. #futurevet
Lexi’s 2010 Special Gift of a Day Family Tradition: Another girl’s day at the animal shelter with her big cousin and few friends! I love that almost every year her idea of a “perfect day” involves serving!
Lexi’s 2014 Gift of a Day: This day included chillin’ at our pond with her bestie! #simplelifeisgood
So that’s it! It’s pretty simple really….but it has had a HUGE impact on my kids. They know I can get “busy” with my job….but they know I know how to “stop the bus” (ß Reference to Ron Clark’s latest Move Your Bus book here! If you haven’t read it yet….do it! It’s great!) and put things in priority. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my family and this is just one simple way I can show them!
If this post has inspired you to try granting “A Gift of a Day Family Tradition” to your kiddos (or hubby), click below to snag my template of our “Gift of Day” cards and give it a try!
Be sure to leave a comment below if this post was helpful to you! I have dozens of other fun family traditions that I’d love to share, if y’all are interested! Perhaps Crystal just might ask me back for another guest post! 🙂
This looks like so much fun for your family! What great memories!
Amanda
What a wonderful tradition and a fabulous way to archive the memories. They will never forget their special days. Thank you for sharing your tradition. My children are grown but I guess it is never too late or could be saved for grandchildren that come along someday, for sure:)