Beach and Bagels: Create summer family traditions the kids will treasure for years to come.
It’s the summer. For our family, that means it’s time for beach and bagels. We are “morning” people and like to get up and go to the beach. We don’t want to sit in traffic. Our ritual: Pick up bagels and cream cheese, coffee, iced tea, 10 Dunkin’ Donuts munchkins and we are off to the beach.
We set ourselves up with our chairs, beach umbrellas, sunscreen and we relax enjoying our breakfast. Then it’s about reading, making sand castles, digging for sand crabs, enjoying the ocean air and spending time together as a family.
The kids look forward to it as do we. Looks like a Beach and Bagels weekend.
What family summer traditions do you have?
There never seems to be a good time to have those difficult conversations with aging parents, but it is important to make time before it’s too late.
I am definitely not an expert in this area, but you have to start somewhere. I casually started discussing with my father my “lessons learned” from being an executor for this person’s estate. It was not a lengthy discussion, but got the conversation started.
· Do you have a will?
· Who is the lawyer who worked on the will for you?
· Who is the executor?
· Do you have a copy of the will in the house? Where is it?
· Where do you keep important documents? birth certificate, house deed, life insurance, etc.
· Do you have a plot?
These are just some basic ideas to have an initial discussion. There are so many other things to think about also (power of attorney, estate planning, if your parents can’t take care of themselves one day (what they want to do)….
Like I said, there is never a good time to have these types of conversations, but they do need to happen. Just start with some of the basics and hopefully you can get the conversation started.
Spend an evening watching “old school” movies with your kids you enjoyed as a child.
Aren’t there some movies you can watch over and over again and bring a smile to your face when you watch them?
Sometimes it is just fun to have a lazy day/evening and watch movies. It’s interesting to get your children’s perspective. Do they enjoy the same parts of the movie you do?
You can stream many of these movies from Netflix or Amazon Prime. I even like to go “old school” and borrow a movie from the library. How about Jiffy Pop popcorn you make on the stove?
Extra Credit: “Summer Homework” – As part of their journal writing, have the kids write up a movie review: Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down, favorite actors/actresses, favorite part of the movie, etc.
What are some of your “old school” favorites?
The summer vacation should be fun, but there needs to be “summer homework” also. Teach your children the importance of developing good study habits.