What I Am Most Passionate About… Time Together with My Family. #maketime

I hope your weekend was an amazing one!  I cannot wait to talk to you about something today that is my biggest passion—> spending time with my family.  There is nothing in the world more important to me than family.  I’ve felt that way since I was just a little girl trying to convince my older siblings that I was WAY more fun to hang out with than their friends at Jr. High.  My family is everything to me so let’s take some time today to talk about how we #maketime for our people and how we balance this with the rest of life!

This post is sponsored by Kenneth Cole, thank you for supporting Andrew, me, the kids and our amazing sponsors.

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My name is Janae and my love language is quality time.  One of the very first things that I learned about Andrew (and fell in love with quickly) was how much he valued spending time with his family.  The way he talked about and spent time with Knox, his parents and his siblings was a huge GREEN light for me during those dating months (ummm weeks?).  Andrew told me that in high school he preferred being at home with his family over friends which in my experience as a high school teacher was not the case for most teens.  I knew from the beginning that our feelings were the same when it came to making time for our family.  It is our top priority in this life.

I grew up with a mom and dad that worked hard to prioritize spending time with us and it made a world of difference for me.  Since we are coming up on Father’s Day, let’s chat about my dad for a minute.

My dad always made sure to make time for daddy-daughter dates with me each month.  I remember a few of those dates included walking all of the way to the movie theater (2-3 miles), going to a movie together and sometimes walking home (or calling my mom to come pick us up;).  He drove me to school each morning and got me through my high school (and college…) math courses by tutoring me each day after school.  My dad set a rule that each of us kids had to drive 100 hours in the car with him before we could get our license.  ONE HUNDRED HOURS.  Besides just wanting us to be good drivers, I know he wanted to spend time with us.  Taking mini road trips with him when we were fifteen to get hours towards our license and talking about everything under the sun was the perfect way to do that.  My dad is an inventor for his profession and works an insane amount of hours each week, which he loves. He says that he is so excited to start working each morning that he actually starts work when some college students are just going to bed!  Yet he always found a way to #maketime for his family.  Always.  Oh and he always dated my mom and still does.  Growing up I knew Friday nights were my parents special night to go out on a date, even though I tried to convince them that I should go too… it was just their night together.  Nothing was or is more important to him than his family.  I can’t wait to celebrate Father’s Day with him this year!

This year the kiddos and I gave Andrew an early Father’s Day present. Brooke will be gone for Father’s Day so we celebrate holidays according to our own calendar;).

We picked out our favorite Kenneth Cole watch to give to Andrew and he absolutely loved it! It really is the perfect Father’s Day gift.  We all work to overcome the challenges that come with balancing work/school/stressors (including kid’s going back and forth between homes right now) and more.  The Kenneth Cole watch reminds us to #maketime for the things that are important no matter what!

I think his new Kenneth Cole watch looks sooooooo good on him:)  .

PPS this is Andrew’s brain freeze face;)

Andrew and I have a whole lot of things to work on when it comes to doing this whole family thing but I thought I would share three of the ways that we #maketime for family!  Life gets busy and stressful for each of us but making time for what is most important to us is important.

1.  A few months ago Andrew and I decided that Thursday nights are SACRED in our home:)  It is the one night each week that we always have both kids so we decided it is our night to make time to be together.  We sing songs, share a lesson usually involving stories about a value we want to teach them, do a special activity and have a treat. The kids really make our day a couple times a week when they ask us, “is it family night tonight?”.  We love to try and find activities where EVERYONE feels involved and something that they both love to do.  We also love to make sure each weekend we choose at least one activity that we can all do together and bond.  With the warmer temperatures it means we have A LOT of hiking coming up!

2.  My mom is an example to me in about a million ways but one way that really sticks out to me was that she made dinner for us every single night to eat together. Tacos, goulash, enchiladas, meatloaf, soups, stews, salads, pastas, you name it, she worked hard each day to prepare something for us to all eat together at the dinner table.  That was my time each day to connect, communicate and build life-long bonds with my family members and that is something that I strive to do with our family.  While I am not the cook my mom is (maybe some day I will transform;), Andrew and I both feel it is so important for us to eat dinner together as a family whether that be at the kitchen table or a restaurant table, every single night together.  These kiddos are only going to get busier and busier as they get older. Starting the habit of having dinner together each night is so important for us!

3.  Something that I’ve really been working on lately is to make time with the kids and Andrew when we are driving in the car.  Doesn’t it feel like the car is a big percentage of the day?  My natural tendency in the car is to kind of not think about anything but the road and to listen to music.  It’s easy for me to be quiet in the car and just be still. Lately I’ve been looking at our car time as conversation time.  What better time to be really talking with the kids, asking them questions and playing Would You Rather (their favorite game on the planet) than during a car ride where we have nothing to distract us and they can’t run away from me in the car;)

We would love to hear the ways that you #maketime to be together as a family.  I’m always looking for more things that we can do to continue to put family first and really build strong relationships.

We all feel extremely grateful for Andrew.  He plays with these kids like you wouldn’t believe.  You can hear Knox and Brooke’s giggles from a block away whenever they are out with Andrew.  He plays, he coaches, he reads, he teaches, he loves, he story-tells, he listens and more to them.

I feel so lucky that this (sassy;) little girl has Andrew too.

He continues to amaze us all by spending time with the kids with zero distractions and truly playing.  I dreamed about these scenes in these pictures for many years and I hope he knows how much we all love him!

Father’s Day is just around the corner (June 18th)!! Give the gift of time to the most important man in YOUR life with a Kenneth Cole timepiece from Macy’s!  You can see their awesome selection of watches on the Kenneth Cole watch page on Macys.com!!

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Have any stories about your dad (or other role models that you grew up with) to share with me?  How did they #maketime to spend together?

What are some ways that you #maketime to spend together with your family?

Have any rules that your parents had for you as a teen that were different from other kids around you?

What was the highlight of your weekend?