Do you take advantage of situations to enjoy time with your kids?

Hanging with my Son

Every Tuesday, my daughter has gymnastic classes, where my wife picks up my daughter right when school lets out and drives her to a different city for her class.  While my wife is going through this routine, my son rides the bus home, while I race from work to beat him to the house.

Once my son arrives home, we originally would wait until my wife called to determine what to do about dinner.  My daughter’s class would not let out until 6:30pm.  So, during the 2 1/2 hour that my son and I would be at home alone together, he would do his homework.  If he didn’t have any homework, he would veg out watching TV, or occasionally we would play video games (this is of course cool too).  This was our routine for a few weeks…

In the past, I would enjoy time with my kids by taking them out for special occasions.  For example, my daughter and I would occasionally have a Daddy and Daughter Day

Then recently, it hit me as I thought to myself: “Why am I letting this alone time with my son go to waste?“.  So last week, we went up to Toys-r-us to check out bikes, then we went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant.

Ironically, earlier I had decided to create a spending budget where I would make sure I spend money on things for myself.  While I missed my goal a little bit with this activity (since it’s for my son too) it’s close enough to my initial goal.  Plus, it will enable us to bond more closely and do some cool things in the process!

Some of my favorite memories of my grandfather were the times when only he and I would go to some of his “Greasy Spoon” restaurants (as my grandmother would call them), and just talk and hang out.   Back then, I was my son’s age (or perhaps a year younger), and I still fondly remember those times together.

So anyhow, I determined that this will be a great way to enjoy time with my son… at least until something disrupts this pattern.

So what did we do today?

Since last week we went to my favorite Chinese restaurant, I let my son choose the restaurant.  The restaurant he picked: “Steak and Shake”, is a cool hamburger joint that’s actually tries to look like one of those “Greasy Spoon” type places that my grandfather would take me to.  How’s that for an irony?

After our quick meal, I know we still had time to burn, so we went to Best Buy, but just to see what is new and exciting…  While there we looked at Apple iPhones, android phone, Apple iPad, laptops, TVs and of course Nintendo DS games.  The 3D TVs were much cooler than either of us expected.  We also learned that the 3D TV can be switch to a 2D mode (I think they called it that) so the TV was just like any regular HDTV.  The iPads were very cool, much lighter than I imagined!

All in all we had a great time, and it was a great “Enjoy Time with your Kids” moment!

If you have kids, do you slice out time to “Enjoy Time With Your Kids” too?  We had a great day and will be doing similar activities every Tuesday from now on…

-MR

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