A few summers ago, we started a summer tradition of family movie night each Friday during the summer. We have kept that tradition and I love it. We do not always have the time or schedule for a movie night each Friday of the school year, but we have tried to make Friday evenings intentional family time whenever possible.

I wrote a few summers ago about our Family Friday movie tradition and how it became about so much more than just watching movies. This continues to be the case. (The Sound of Music has led to some ongoing conversations in particular that I am constantly trying to navigate to make age appropriate…)

This summer we did not take some of the usual vacations we would have in the past as we changed our budget to accommodate sponsoring a kid with World Vision and are saving up for the trip to the NYC Marathon. So we wanted to upgrade some of our traditional movie nights. One Friday this included having a giant sleepover. (The kids said this was their favorite memory from the summer.) Another movie night ended with a giant glow stick party. We did popcorn tasting and we subbed out one movie Friday for a game-a-thon night.

During the school year we are going to try and continue this family time- some weeks with a movie, some weeks with a game night (even if we can only squeeze in one game instead of four!), and some weeks we will I inevitably not have Friday nights available and I hope we can still be sure to set aside intentional family time during those crazy weeks too. However, the start of the school year also means the return to our tradition of “your special day” which is one on one time with a special activity for each kid with either mom or dad on the day of the month their birthday falls on. Plus, we are already dreaming of the quality time we get together during school breaks and what we should do with that!

Readers with littles in your family- however that family may look- How do you prioritize family time? Do you have a favorite family activity? I’d love to hear about it.