10 Ways to Make Today Magical

Happy Sunday!

Sorry to have been gone for so long.  I’ve been doing a little of this….

And a little of this (three kids with birthdays in one week!)…

(That’s not actually our cake at all, just a picture that a friend posted on my wall for my lego-loving boy!)

And a little of this…

It turns out that I am severely anemic and need to have weekly IV iron treatments for a month to try to get my levels up to par.

Tomorrow is dose number two (please let the veins be easier this time!) so I figured I’d get this week’s list out early. 

And I am totally cheating by lifting today’s list from May 2011!  There are benefits to having yapped at you all for so long now!  🙂

So without further ado, here’s a few ways to sneak in a little magic with our kiddos this week…….

1.  Make poetry shells.  Gather up a bunch of pistachio shells, smooth rocks  or other natural objects and use a magic marker to write words on them.  Make sure to use adjectives, nouns and verbs.  For example…. I, you, we, love, wet, dogs, jumped, lick, stars…. the more words you make the more variety you can get in your poem.  Drop the rocks in a bucket, shake, and grab a handful to arrange into each line.  Make sure to add some funny words!

2.  Help the kids hide love-you notes for a loved one (daddy, grandma, etc.).  Fill them with messages to make the recipient laugh or feel good, such as limericks, 5 reasons you’re the best grandpa, and so on.  Try to leave some where it will take a few days and some that will pop up in dull places, such as in the car or briefcase.

3.  Take the whole family out for a starry drive.  Park by a lake or just in an empty lot away from city lights.  Lay a blanket down or pull out some lawn chairs and just sit as a family and watch the stars.  See if you can see any shooting stars.  Point out the constellations to your kids.  Talk about what you thought when you looked at the stars when you were a child.

4. Make puzzles for breakfast.  Use cookie cutters to cut shapes out of toast, pancakes or french toast.  Let kids match the shapes to the pieces with the holes and fit back in.

5.  Have the kids make up funny fortunes and put them in homemade fortune cookies or leave them in unexpected places like cereal boxes.

6.  Go down memory lane.  Take the kids to the hospital where they were born, the school you went to, or the park where daddy proposed.  Tell them the stories of those far-off times.

7.  Start a wish tradition.  My mom always saved the tip of her pie for the last bite and made a wish on it.  Victoria always does this in honor of her grandma, even though they never met.  You can also wish on stars, dandelion fluff, pennies in fountains, or just something you make up.  See if your family can invent some neat new ones.

8.  Dress the kids up with some whimsy (with painted faces, wearing fairy wings, in ball gowns, etc.) and go someplace fun.

9.  Dance in the rain.

10. Celebrate an unexpected anniversary.  Search through baby books, letters or old e-mails and find something neat that happened on this date.  Surprise your little one with a cake to celebrate the 4 year anniversary of her first word.  Start writing notes on your calendars of all the milestones your family goes through, then keep them on a master calendar.  How fun it would be in a few years to be able to look at this date in your family’s history and see that 6 years ago you moved into your house, 3 years ago the baby crawled for the first time, and last year this was the day your son cooked his first meal.

And with that, my dears, I’m off to do the oh-so-magical task of more laundry!

Have a wonderful week.