This and That
We spent the day simply being family.
Today is “Play Station” day in our home. I’m going to have to rethink this idea. We put the TV and the Play Station in storage when we moved here. We pull out a projector and screen that Mike made, once a week for a movie….Recently we thought we could add Play Station back in once a week. It seemed to me that Saturday would be a good Play Station day, as the screen is often out Friday night for a movie. All week the younger boys asked for Play Station and I said, “Saturday is Play Station day”. I even put it on the calendar. You guessed it – they wanted to do nothing else all day. This won’t fly. I’m thinking I may have them earn 30 minutes of play time with say 50 tickets. That would probably be about 30 minutes two or three times a week. I don’t know.
Arielle, Nolan and Zander played a lot of PS games today. Cy worked. Bre wanted to hang out at home. Jamin and Jared got stir crazy and so they, Krista and I went in search of a bike carrier. Krista would like to take her bike with her to WA this year. We found one.
We weren’t ready to come home so we wandered to the mall. The boys went one way and Krista and I had a chance to talk alone and shop. We found some gifts for their host parents for the upcoming year. We returned some shoes that Stacia doesn’t want to wear. {G} We waved at Cy while he worked. We TRIED (for the 2nd time) to buy a battery for our cordless phone. It seems that this is as hard as finding a PDA battery. We bought a Chick Fil A shake and wandered down to Taco Bell and ate. :::snort:::
When we got home BreAnne and Arielle had set up a tea party. We haven’t had a real tea party since we moved from Alaska. It was great. We enjoyed visiting and connecting and talking about the upcoming year and such.
Then it was time for baths. The girls had asked for *First Daughter* from Netflix. We watched that. We enjoy this one best of all the “president daughter type” movies. Josiah was glad to have missed it. Jamin said that he doesn’t want to watch any more of those “one thought, emotional movies”. Zander sat down and said, “Ok, when this one freezes, then we’ll watch Spy Kids 1, and when it freezes we’ll watch play station”. ::::snort::: Can you tell our DVD player freezes quite a bit? It never froze – poor kid.
Now it’s time for bed.
6 comments:
Sounds like a good day! I'm sure it was nice just to spend time with everyone and not have a particular schedule. I just love those days! I hope your Sunday turns out the same.
Blessings,
Lisa
I love those kinds of days. I can understand why your kids love the PS, I love video games and have to really watch my time. This is also why we do not have one of the newer game systems. We have a very old Super Nintendo. If we got a new one, I would want to play all the time! LOL
It sounds like a really super day to me.
Deb
Sounds like a good day. When my children were younger we had to do away with the video game machine completely(mind you we got it when they were very, very young, as it was for DH too). We started to allow it again about a year ago and they have been fine. I think it depends on the kids and the ages. Here they may play for several hours each day for a week and then won't look at it again for several weeks. For my particular kids knowing that it is not the forbidden fruit so to speak seems to make it less apealing, LOLOL. I know that sounds funny but they used to want games more when it was only allowed at certain times. But again this is so individual I'm guessing. I've heard that some people do well with earned tickets for a certain amount of play time. Good luck finding just the right solution for your family.
Jodi
Oh and I forgot something about DVD's, a funny thing happens here, if we use our more expensive DVD player rented discs tend to skip, if we use the very cheap DVD player they rarely skip, no idea why!
We have very few "forbidden" things in our home for the very reason you mention, Jodi.
However, Zander is fairly obsessive...and anti-social. He was in his own world - literally before we moved here. He woudln't interact with us. REmoving "screens" and adjusting his diet has been our two pronged approach to getting him to interact with us. I didn't explain that all in my post...but that is why we so severely limit the time he spends on these things...and the rest of us simply benefit from it...more creative play, reading time etc. The older kids DO play the PS whenever they would like when I have the younger ones out of the home.
I think most kids could limit themselves....and some day Zander will be in that boat....but for the time being it is much easier to have a set plan than to let him do "whatever he wants". I was guilty because I liked having him quiet and contained while we did school, chores etc...but then that wasn't helping his anti-social personality at all.
So there's the long explanation of why we are on a search to find the way to balance "screens" in our lives. LOL
Zander sounds just like my first son, Jon. I think you are doing what is right. We had to get rid of all games, tv, and computer for a whole year when he was younger. It really paid off.
Blessings,
Lisa
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