Family Matters

I remember it from the time I was young. We loved celebrating the holidays with my mom’s side of the family, where there were many kids and lots of space. Grandpa and Grandma gave us candy and we slept on the floor and stayed awake until late at night, sharing silly jokes. Dad’s side of the family was not as much fun and every year, when the time came and dad said we were celebrating with his family, we were counting the seconds for the holiday to end.

As you can see from the list, there are many things you can do with your kids to keep them busy and happy. If you decide to take a different idea each time and spread them over 52 weekends and 8 weeks of the school holidays, you may not even have to repeat any of them throughout the same year.

What can you do?

Play hide-and-seek at night when the lights are off. There is still so much light coming in through the windows that soon your kids will ask to put some things on the windows to make sure it is really dark. If you have very young kids, make sure someone is hiding with them and make a rule not to scare each other.

You are here today for the third part of the series, “Mom, I’m Bored!” with 100 fun things you can do with your kids to keep them busy, happy and having fun and even bonding with them as a family.

Yesterday, I started posting a series of 100 ideas for parents to keep their kids busy and happy. Today, I am adding 20 more tips and I hope you will find them helpful.

All you need to do is go over them and schedule them into your weekends and holidays. I promise that by the end of the week, you will have so many ideas you will be asking for more weekends and holidays with your kids.

One of the things parents hate hearing the most is “I’m bored”. When my kids come and say this to me, I feel like, on top of being the cleaner, the accountant, the teacher, the gardener and many other titles that I carry, I also have the wonderful title of Entertainer. But when I get rid of the fear I have of all of this, it can actually be quite fun.

Holidays are not a luxury, they are essential. From time to time, we all need to stop cooking, washing and the cleaning, stop learning and working, stop watching the same TV programs or eating the same kind of food. From time to time, we all need a change in the way we dress, the climate, the landscape and the people around us.

Today, everyone in Australia is celebrating Queen’s birthday.
I remember, when we first arrived here, we were very surprised at the holidays Australians have.
The birthday of the Queen, who is only officially the queen of Australia, but has no role in daily life here, is still a good reason for a public holiday.
Horse racing is another [...]

Every year since 1982, the 25th of December (Christmas Day) is a memorial day for me. One of the people who had the greatest influence on my life passed away that day. I remember the phone call early in the morning, telling me he was not with us anymore. He was the first person close to me who had ever died. I was just 18 and for a long time I thought about not having the opportunity to say goodbye.

Just before the holidays and the start of a new year, we went to Southbank Parklands in Brisbane to spread some real holiday cheer with free hugs and some good friends.
Some truly touching stories were told to us, like a grandmother, whose grandson had been in an accident in the country and had been flown [...]