As we try to ease into 2025, life will have other plans. There were practices and rehearsals, parties and birthday parties. We’re all rushing to “do it all,” but we often leave one important thing behind: spending quality time with the people we love.

One mum admits her family are either making plans a mile a minute or It’s the couch potato staring at the screen. She was fed up with this imbalance and decided to take a proactive plan to fix it.

“We knew we didn’t want to be a busy family where our kids were involved in a million activities and we were away every weekend,” Abigail Roy begins.

“But we fell on the other end very quickly and we did nothing. This year we are going to change that.

Using a simple schedule, she planned a four-month recurring schedule with fun, family-friendly activities on the second Saturday of each month.

“We just wanted to get something on the calendar. Our goal was just to get out of the house for a few hours and do something fun, new, exciting. It doesn’t have to be expensive, just something different,” she elaborated Each month’s family activity content was explained previously.

“The first month was a family day. We went somewhere together. The second month, one parent took two kids and the other parent took a break. The third month was when we each took one kid because we wanted to Get to know them independently. It’s easy to mix them up, especially since our kids are so close in age and the kids are at home with the kids. It gets repetitive, but we changed planners,” she explains. road.

Well, this is awesome! Each reserved Saturday has a different purpose and ensures that the emotional needs of everyone in the family are met. Mom gets a break (and so does dad!) and their kids get to spend some quality one-on-one time with both parents. Roy also made sure that all the emotional labor of planning didn’t fall on her shoulders (as moms often do!).

Pointing to the chart behind her, she continued, “My plan. His plan. We swap who takes care of the kids and who takes the day off. We swap who takes the kids one-on-one, who plans the date night. We make it a Priorities. We put it on the refrigerator. It’s visual, it’s color-coded, and it fits with our values ​​of living slow and not letting things get boring.

Well, living slowly and not being boring is my new motto for 2025!