"Fun?" We'd like to have more fun together but our family is just too busy. We don't have a minute to spare. Fun just isn't practical right now."
Perhaps that was your reaction when someone (maybe your own children) suggested that your family do something "fun" together. Maybe other things--including church activities--seem more important. And wouldn't this attempt at family fun eat up even more of your limited time?
Many busy parents have a hard time taking family fun seriously.But it IS serious business. It provides one small bit of the glue that binds families together and helps sustain them through the difficult times of life. Family fun is recreation in the best sense of the word: a time of family "re-creation".
MAKE A FAMILY MEMORY
We started our family fun experiences when our children were young. We made it a family tradition to go camping together every Memorial and Labor day weekend. We had a lot of fun fishing, cooking out, and just "getting away" together. Since my idea of camping does not include sleeping on the ground, we used an old tent camper that we pulled behind our car.
Inevitably, the old camper died one spring. The metal frame that supported the tent would no longer open. The rust had finally won! We didn't want to give up our fun family camping tradition so I borrowed a tent from a friend and we went camping anyway.
It rained the entire first night and the tent leaked generously. You can imagine what happended. We all woke up Saturday morning lying in a pool of water that had collected in our tent during the night. The rain continued the next day and by late Saturday afternoon we gave up and went home.
That was the fist and last time
