You or your hubs or both get home from work around 5 or 6. Dinner needs to be put on the table. Toddlers need to be coaxed into tasting everything even if they don’t think they’ll like it. Dishes need to be cleaned up. Then, all of a sudden, it is 8pm and the bedtime routine begins.
I’m sorry, but where in there am I supposed to cultivate a happy family that is well-bonded and centered in Christ? WHERE??
Oh, I know. We do usually have about 10 minutes between dishes and brushing teeth. So, as long as I can fit it all in there, we should be good…
Or, how about this? You do have a little bit of time to spend together as a family, but you spend it together but separate. You’re too exhausted to come up with an enriching and fun activity that the whole family will enjoy because the baby slept a total of three hours last night, your husband had to wake up at 5 for work, and you dealt with more poop that day than an outhouse emporium. I get that.
“Play with usssssss!”
The Solution
In steps Sarah Reinhard and her book Catholic Family Fun: A Guide for the Adventurous, Overwhelmed, Creative, or Clueless.
“In Catholic Family Fun, Sarah equips all of us parents who share the goal of getting our families to heaven with the tools for making real progress. Instead of just weekly pizza and a movie, Sarah brings our faith into the mix in a vibrant and tangible manner by suggesting ways we can serve others, meals we can make together, and adventures we can experience hand-in-hand.” -Greg Willits
How about that? Promising, right? And, listen to what our fearless 7QT leader has to say about it:
“Every Catholic family needs this book on its bookshelf. Drawing from person experience as a busy mom, Sarah offers parents creative ways to lead their families in entertaining, faith-centered activities.” -Jennifer Fulwiler
How It Works
Each section has different activities (sorted by time and cost) that any family can execute with ways to modify for your own family and ways to incorporate the Catholic faith.
Make your next trip to the library a Catholic trip. Create a Mary Garden. Set up a treasure hunt. Have a silly story time. Have tea with God. So. Many. Ideas.
And Sarah wants you to try them. That’s why she is giving away a copy of her book to one Call Her Happy-ite (Do you call yourselves that?).
The Giveaway
Be honest, y’all.
This is definitely something I could use. My family’s glaring inadequacies in our spiritual and prayer lives need an overhaul.
We watched the Olympics together for a lot of the day Saturday, while chasing babies and making sure they puked into bowls instead of on the floor. I suppose it was a good day for everyone to have a stomach bug?
That is to say, we’ve done very little as a family that would enhance our spiritual lives.
(Sorry for the broken comment. One fingered commenting on my phone is hard.)
We would love this!Thank you so much!
I’ve been wanting to get a copy! Looks awesome!
Hmm…that last thing we did as a family…sad to say I think that was going to Mass on Sunday and eating pancakes afterwards with the Knights of Colombus. Monday and Tues were pretty hectic nights around here with different outside the house activities going on.
I definitely could use a book like this. My family needs more prayer and activity!! definitely hard when both mom and dad feel burnt out :/
As a family, the last think we did together…go to church? yea…it’s just become even more obvious how bad we are..
We weekly make a point to all go to Sunday mass together even if it means getting up earlier or going later. We also took our boys to a hockey game last Saturday night as a family.
lol we ate dinner. It’s been pretty laid back in that area lately.
This would be great to have on hand as our daughter (and family?) grows.
…and now to follow the rules… My husband works a lot of swing shifts – but, we still try to eat dinner together if possible and nights he is home we gather together in our daughters room before bed to read/unwind/etc…
Lol, we took my oldest son to karate, all together. We take our family time when we can get it heh.
As a family of six, from teen to 6 year old, the schedules make it hard to do anything as a family. I would love to have some ideas to enhance our spirituality together as a family.
We read the daily Scripture reading together every night, plus a short saint story from Give Us This Day. Last night, we wrapped things up with five minutes of contemplative prayer.
We always do bath time together and eat dinner together. We’re just a young family of 3 though, so together time is still fairly easy :)
Went to Sunday Mass and a swap meet.
We all went to dinner together before the impending snowstorm!
awesome, thanks for the opportunity! God bless
We got the kids ready for bed: say our prayers, husband reads the Bible (children’s version), then sing a song and kisses all around.
We watched The Little Mermaid together as a family :) Deff need help with family time!
Love this! The last thing we did as a family was play at the beach this afternoon (feeling guilty saying this as half the nation is under storm watch!).
We ate dinner together and then watched a movie.
We went to a pizza buffet for Valentine’s lunch
We ate dinner and watched the Olympics together.
We usually have anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour between the end of dinner and the beginning of the bedtime routine. We try to spend that time together, doing something like playing with blocks or reading books. I hadn’t thought about ways to make it Catholic … I like it!
Umm,…my goal is a Mary garden this year. Pretty excited about it :)
Oh, also, the least thing we did as a family…sleep
When I came home from work we all played and laughed together before the baby went to bed.