I find myself today grateful that my kids have married into fun families!!!
As Richard and I look back at our childhood we both say "we didn't really have fun families." Our family time just wasn't that chatty, game playing laughing fun time we see other families have. We had both wanted our kids to be raised in a fun family. In looking back we thought we made life fun, but observing our kids in-laws' families, especially our sons we know now, we just didn’t know how to do that!
My childhood idea of fun
When my brother threw me down and hog tied me - laughing and smiling or when he would drop me down in the hay bails so I couldn’t get out laughing all the while, I thought we were having fun. When my sister would take me on trips and we would pick up hitch hikers, or my brother would let me drive to school in the 9th grade because he was hung over. I thought we were having fun because everyone was smiling and laughing, even if I wasn’t. When Richard was left on his own to run the streets or turned loose on the family vaca in exchange for the parents "adult time" - he thought alone, unsupervised time was his family fun time!
Us raising kids to have fun
When we had kids I expected him to help me thinking he would know how to have fun, and today he said he "didn’t know how and probably didn’t care he was trying to make a living"!!!Life is hard right? And Thus We See...We didn't grow up in families that "had laugh out loud fun"!
Fun playing out in life ... or Not
It’s so interesting to me then, what you as a child are raised to believe is fun, because of what you see the adults do in your life.So today for the first time I guess I’m thinking having a fun family is hereditary and conditioned on knowing how to have a fun family already! Hum!!! HEr me, we are not dissing our parents at this point we are learning, researching, gaining information so as to break cycles for future generations.
Break the Cycle! Endeavour to Be Fun!
Accepting this knowledge doesn't have to stymie the family fun. This year with my whole Endeavour Project I will find a way for my family to be and have so much fun it will start a new cycle. Break old patterns and achieve that laugh out loud, be Dang Fun Fun status! Building memories is what my present state of life is! Endeavour to be ... Dang Fun!
