Simply Sunday #6

Hello and happy Sunday!

This week I'll just share one thing we did this week in an effort to simplify.  We had a "Papa's Home" party.  A bit of background is needed for this to make sense. 

My husband's job has really been a drain lately.  They are understaffed and there has been a lot of pressure to work overtime.  As a result, he's had to work 5-7 days every week for quite a while.  This means we only have him awake for a couple hours every day.  Major bummer.

This past week he had Tuesday off and we made the most of it.  We were going to go out to eat.  (We had a gift card that someone had kindly given us.)  But ultimately we decided against going out. Instead we stayed in and had a "party." 

I use quotation marks to signal that our family tends to have a broader definition of the term than many others.  I guess that is part of embracing simple living.  We try to see a feast in every meal, a party in every bit of recreation.

We had a great time this past Tuesday at our "party"! 

We began with a veritable feast of frozen pizza and snack chips.  We rarely eat such things, so this is a real treat.  I keep them on hand in case of an opportunity to "party."  We enjoyed them mightily.

After our feast, we declared it "family game night."  We began with a rousing game of Dora the Explorer charades.  Each child was paired with a parent.  It was pretty hysterical because the kids are not all that great at miming clues.  And the parents were not too hip on the Dora characters, so we were all at a disadvantage in various ways.  We laughed hysterically.  It was more about the fun than the competition.

Later we got out the "Operation" game.  Our kids were gifted that last Christmas, but we've only played it once or twice so far.  The kids were actually pretty steady-handed!

Our party went on for quite a while until it was late and we were tired.  But we didn't want to stop the festivities, so we slowed things down with a cartoon before calling it a night.

What a great time we all had!  It is so important to take those times to build relationship and just laugh together.  We need to stop and smell the roses sometimes.