1. Get out your pastry bag and a fancy tip, and let the kids pipe themselves some fancy lunches. For example, make mashed potatoes and some veggies. Let them pipe the potatoes into a fabulous pattern and use the veggies as accents. They can also write out their names or make pretty designs.
2. Fly kites together. Better yet, help the kids make their own. Here’s a site with some basic plans, here’s a super easy kite you can even make with coffee stirrers and plastic bags, and here’s an amazing international site for older kids or families who really get into kite making together. They have over 1,500 kite plans!
3. Play party games like Charades or Pictionary together.
4. Give each other crazy makeovers. Don’t forget to take pictures!
5. Go on a photo walk. Bring a camera for each of you and take pictures of anything that strikes you as photo worthy. When you get home, compare pics and start a Flickr page for your best family shots.
6. Transform the kids’ old shoes into gilded shoe planters.
7. Tell the kids that laughing is good for people and set a family goal of laughing for a certain length of time, like 10 minutes straight. Ask them to do whatever it takes to keep laughing and help keep everybody else laughing!
8. Play commercial challenge. At every commercial a different person gets to be the exercise instructor and everybody has to do all the exercises she calls out (the instructor too!). Encourage silliness, like doing jumping jacks while counting in pig latin or dancing like baby chicks.
9. Go for an after-dinner walk, just the two of you. Talk about what it was like when you were a kid and ask questions about what’s new in his life.
10. Let your kids use markers on a box of bandaids to make them personalized. (Thanks Victoria!)