While I have been deliberately cutting down on my blog subscriptions, I have still managed to find a great new blog called FIMBY (Fun In My Back Yard). And it is via FIMBY that I came across this great post talking about deliberately making the time and effort to get out as a family and spend time doing stuff together.
It really resonated with me – not only because we like to do ‘outdoors stuff’ and camping as a family (though not enough of that happening lately, I will admit …) but also because it mentions that most organised activities these days, in America (and I say also Australia and the UK) are rarely about families doing things together:
The vast majority of modern organized activities are age segregated, sex segregated, and parent/child segregated. There is no such thing as a family soccer league. As a result, engaging the entire family has meant that we don’t participate in a whole host of “all American” activities. We don’t do football, soccer, or baseball unless it is a pick-up game at a barbecue. Will our children be deprived? No. It’s not like football is a life-skill required to in order to survive. There are good life skills and experiences that can learned from from playing team sports, but those same skills can also be acquired in many other ways.
What really resonates with me in this quote (and the post in general) is that there is nothing wrong with doing your own thing – you don’t have to book in with a group or organised activity to experience something. You can just make it up as you go along. You can be different (just look at the name of this blog, people 🙂 ) it’s allowed. And you know what? It’s usually more fun that way.
Let's do something different 
Yee-Haw! I’m so glad that this post resonated with you. Sometimes following your own family path seems lonely so when others come along side (walking their own paths, in their unique ways) we feel encouraged!
Thanks for visiting Natalia and leaving the nice comments.
Thanks for visiting & commenting!
Darwin’s English Setter goodness will assimilate you into the dog loving clan. Resistance is futile. Just wait. You’ll find yourself googling english setters, you’ll learn that es owners think they’re the best dogs in the world, you’ll google what others think about this & one day, you’ll find yourself saying “hon, I think we need a dog.” Just you wait. 😀
WRT the doing your own thing – as my kids get older, something I’ve noticed is how peculiar we are for not only having family vacations, but for not having the kids’ friends with us on these vacations. It seems that many parents & kids spend so little time with each other, that they don’t actually know each other, & therefore the prospect of being alone together for an extended length of time is too scary to contemplate – kind of like taking a 2 week vacation with the neighbour three houses down whom you’ve only met twice at a block party bbq: too weird. So – the adults grab a spouse or a S.O. or a friend; the kids grab a friend – all to ensure that there’s a friendly face in the crowd.
We still travel alone, & we do most things alone, outings, day trips etc – alone en famille. I’ve even been increasingly paring down our field trips with homeschool groups. Often the outing is much more successful and pleasant if we just go ourselves on a quiet day; I find it worth it even if I have to give up the group discount.