Happy New Year! What exciting family plans do you have for 2024? Whatever fun adventures you’ve plotted for the ones you love most, make the most of every minute and create lasting memories to treasure for a lifetime. And the bonus for 2024? You have one extra day this year for celebrating the love of family. Happy Leap Year! Enjoy some of the festivities below and create some unique family ones of your own.
➤ National Skating Month – When is the last time you went skating as a family? Did you get the chance to go ice skating over the holidays? If you have roller skates, strap on a pair, get the kids to do the same, and practice your moves on the driveway. Or go for a day trip to rent ice skates and take a spin around the rink. If neither of those options work, gather shoeboxes and use them as skates in the front yard. Place sock-covered feet in two shoebox bottoms and skate across the leaves and grass.
➤ Curmudgeons Day – Do you have a curmudgeon in your life? Are you the sometimes-curmudgeon in the family? Read a few books about curmudgeons and then talk together as a family about the things that make each of you grouchy and what helps you snap out of a curmudgeon-mood. Read these books aloud together: The Unbudgeable Curmudgeon by Matthew Burgess; Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina; Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst, and; No, David by David Shannon.
➤ Chocolate Cake Day – Work in the kitchen together to make this yummy chocolate cake. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour a ten-inch bundt pan. In a medium bowl, stir together the contents of one yellow cake mix, one 3.9 ounce package instant chocolate pudding mix, and one-half cup white sugar. Add three-fourths cup water, three-fourths cup vegetable oil, four beaten eggs and one cup sour cream. Mix well until blended. Fold in one-half cup milk chocolate chips. Pour batter into the prepared bundt pan. Bake for one hour, but check at fifty minutes. If a toothpick inserted into cake comes out clean, cake is ready. Cool in pan for ten minutes. Invert cake onto a wire cooling rack. Once the cake is cooled completely, dust with powdered sugar.
➤ National Compliment Day – Implement this one for the entire month of January, and hopefully, it will become an every-day habit. Encourage each family member to offer at least one compliment per family member per day throughout the month. With the addition of verbal compliments shared throughout the month, have each family member write compliments on small sheets of paper once a week for each person and drop them into a basket that you’ll leave on the counter this month. Then, at the end of the month, read the compliments out loud together.
➤ Measure Your Feet Day – Have fun measuring each person’s foot to see who has the longest toe-tappers. To add a bit of silliness to the day, measure with more than one instrument. Measure first with a ruler to get foot length in inches. Then measure with a paperclip to see how many paperclips-long each foot is. Measure also with a toy car, chapstick tube, plastic spoon and any other silly measuring device you can think of. Then find a gently-used pair of shoes that each person has outgrown and donate the pairs to a clothing closet at your church for someone who needs new footwear. Even better, take a field trip to buy new shoes to donate.
Whatever resolutions you penned or uttered verbally just a couple of days ago, make sure the list has lots of family fun included for the year. Plan little moments to share together, and big ones too, that will create lasting memories for 2024. Laugh and giggle a lot, play every day, sing loudly and off-key, get outside often, give thanks for your blessings and make every day a holiday this year with those you love best. Happy 2024!
Statesboro native Julie Lavender is looking forward to sweet family times in 2024. She is the author of the mom’s devotional, Strength for All Seasons, and the children’s Bible story book, Children’s Bible Stories for Bedtime.