One of my favorite things that we’ve started with our family are Family Movie Nights. It started with Michael’s love of homemade pizza, and has evolved over the years into a full blown tradition.
Every Friday night we have pizza (homemade when Michael is home, takeout when he’s not), eat in the family room, and watch a movie. This basic set up has been going on for years, since before we had kids! But last summer Jennifer Borget and her daughter Jayda created the Movie Night Journal, and it has upped our Family Movie Night game!
Using the journal, we created some rules and a rotation for who gets to pick the movie each week. We also love recording our thoughts about each movie we see.
One of my favorite parts of Family Movie Night is the rule ‘We don’t watch the same movie two picks in a row.’ In our family, we rotate through all the members of the family (Yes, even Jr!) so each person gets (roughly) one pick per month. By not allowing the same movie to be picked twice, we have at least 2 months between rewatches. Which is saying something when you have preschoolers who like to rewatch the same thing over and over.
I love having these weekly family traditions, in addition to our holiday or birthday traditions because it gives us some dedicated family time every week. It can be hard as schedules pick up; sports, clubs, friends. All add to the chaos of making dedicated family time. If movies aren’t your thing, do a game night, go hiking, whatever activity that your family loves to do together. Do it! And make the time for it weekly.
Living in Plaid 