Time

With any family time is always something that you need, and with being a marine family (or any military family) you need to make time, and for our family we have things that we do every week. And maybe this are things that if we had a 9 to 5 job that we may not do each week. Or would take the time we have together much more laid back. I'm glad that we are making it a big deal for our kids and in hope they will do the same with their families.

On a week to week we have game night on Wednesday with the kids, and on Friday after dinner we trun our table in to a snack bar for movie night. And once and a while we go to the drive in for the movie. But our kids know what is going to happened and look forward to it just as much as we do. Sunday is a family day and if we have some shopping to do we do it, but as a family.

To save time at night, we do not read small kid books at night. As a family we pick out a chapter book that we all want to read and read one to two chapters a night. If there is a movie that goes with it we will watch it on a movie night when the book is done. It save us a ton of time at night, and we get to read some good books together.

Month to month we try to get away once a month to do something fun as a family, for the day. and on the date of a birthday in our house that person gets to pick something fun to do, or something to eat. On their birthday it's all about that person, to favorite food, to whatever they want to do. We also make a big deal out holidays and whatnot.

We feel with doing all of this when Matthew is home, and then when he is gone we have things we know we will do and it helps make the time go faster for us as a family. I will talk more on how we plan for him leaving and what else we do to help things go as best as they can.