Family Life

No guests, No problem. Your child can have a Happy Birthday at home, even on lockdown!

birthday party at home

Did you have big plans for your child’s birthday, only to be disappointed with the news that your favorite venues would be closed for business when the time came to celebrate? I’m with you! Two of my children have birthdays in April, and our plans for celebrating at Urban Air, Sakekawa Japanese Steakhouse and Sushi Bar, and The Woodlands Mall have all been crushed. There’s hope for me though, because since I have a larger-sized family, everything we do together seems kinda like a party. But what about those of you with a single child? How do you celebrate at home, in a big way, without the cousins and friends around? Try one of these ideas:

9 Categories of Ideas for a Super Productive Week!

Need ideas for a productive day at home? Cover items in each of these categories each week, and you and your crew will feel plenty satisfied.

Music

Gather the family for an all-out jam session using any instruments at your disposal (metal spoons on pots and pans, oatmeal container drums, bean shakers, etc.). My teenager likes to pull our her guitar or ukulele, while the rest of us use toy instruments.

Special Events Calendar - Life at home in The Woodlands just got more interesting!

Are all the days starting to look the same for you and your crew as you honker down during this Coronavis crisis? That's certainly the case at my house. With the exception of our streaming church service on Sunday, our daily routine is pretty identical. We homeschool Monday - Friday, and sometimes even that spills into the weekend. There are no extracurricular activities - running to dance lessons several times a week, sewing class, speech therapy - to help us keep track of which day it is. Even my husband, who usually travels extensively for work, is passing his weekdays at home with us (which we are loving, by the way). The only time we leave the house lately is to visit the grocery store or to take a walk through the neighborhood. And the kids aren't included in the grocery runs, so they are literally home ALL the time with the exception of our evening walks.

Enough of the "homeschooling" kerfuffle! These projects ideas are WAY better than academics!

Coronavirus is giving us (and the rest of the world) the business! We’ve seen so many articles to the effect of “welcome to homeschooling”, and, while clearly it’s time for us parents to get in the driver’s seat when it comes to educating our kiddos (at least for the time being), we don’t recommend switching into high gear with a new homeschooling routine and brand new curriculum just yet. Trust us, we value academics, but they aren’t going anywhere. How often do we really get to take our time and relish in working together on special, memorable projects with our kids? When you look back on this time after life is back to normal, do you want to say “We did a great job maintaining and keeping school going” or would you rather say “Boy, what special things we did!”?

Fun At-Home Ideas for Spring Break

Many schools are closed due to Coronavirus, and travel plans are being cancelled too. Even the Disney Parks are closed now, guys! Are you chilling at home, scratching your head for ideas on what to do? Here are some fun ideas to put to use!

Plant a raised garden bed – Now’s the perfect time to plant cucumbers, peppers, and tomatoes!
Ride bikes / scooters around the neighborhood
Backyard camping – Set up a tent, pop popcorn, enjoy s’mores around the firepit, read books, and have root beer floats
Play board games – or card gam,es – or Jacks – or charades
Do puzzles – Sharpen you mind with jigsaw puzzles, Rubik’s cubes, brainteaser, and riddles.
Have a movie marathon! Surely you’ve ordered Disney Plus by now?
Hike the trails – We love the George Mitchell Nature Preserve.
Play on the front lawn with hula hoops, sidewalk chalk, bubbles, jump ropes, and remote controlled cars.
Have a tea party – with stuffed animals, tea cakes, finger sandwiches, and fake accents
Put on a puppet show! Or a dance show! Or a play! Have fun learning the lines and creating all the costumes and backdrops.

Explore The Woodlands Mall like never before!

Have you tapped into the magic of The Woodlands Mall with your family? With the right approach, a trip to our nearest mall can be almost as exciting as a day at a theme park! Here’s how to extract the best value out of your next visit with your family.

Indoor playground – If you have toddlers or preschoolers, bringing little ones to run off some energy at the indoor playground (downstairs in front of JC Penney) is one of the more obvious attractions. You can sit and relax (and maybe browse Facebook) as your child uses his imagination while climbing over and under bridges, scooting down slides, following colorful paths, and engaging with other kids. The playground is free, and parental supervision is required at all times.

Pet Fair – Doggy kisses! It’s fun to visit the pet store, even when (especially when) you leave empty-handed. These adorable pets need to be loved on, and sometimes, children benefit from the interactions even more than the pets do. Your family favorites might be the puppies and kittens, but don’t let your kids miss the less-than-popular animals such as the snakes, mice, pot-bellied pigs, bunny rabbits, and baby chicks (some of these are only offered seasonally)!

Games to Play to Pass the Travel Time Away

It's that time of year! Spring Break is right around the corner and most likely you'll be in the car or on a plane with your family and will need a few things to do to help the time go by. Once all the snacks are eaten, books are read and movies are watched why not start up an old fashioned family car game?

Here are a few of our favorite ways to pass the time behind the wheel or in the air:

The Year of the Picnic!

picnic
My family takes advantage of picnicking in The Woodlands as often as possible, but our picnics are almost always the same. But not anymore! I found this gem of a book - A Year of Picnics - at one of the libraries in Harris County, and the author has planned 20 different themed picnics for us to sink our teeth into. It's really getting my creative juices flowing! I can't wait to implement some of these ideas along with many of my own. Each picnic idea includes a menu, packing listing, and suggested activities. While a "Breakfast Picnic" might include playing games like hide and seek, walking along a creek, or eating homemade biscuits and jam, a Bird-Watching picnic might implore you to pack binoculars and a birding field guide plus a lunch that includes pickled eggs and birdseed cookies.

Sandwich. Chips. Fresh fruit. Sitting on a blanket for a while and then watching the kiddos run off to enjoy the playground. Almost always at our favorite park. Nah, those picnics are a thing of the past for us! The year 2021 will be my year to step up the picnic game. Here are some ways we can pull it off.

Change the setting:

- Picnic at different parks with various features (over 100 in The Woodlands!)

- Use interesting blankets / quilts / table coverings, and switch them out so each picnic has a different feel

- Go picnicking at various times of day to enjoy differing types of crowd, lighting, and weather conditions

- Vary the picnic style - tent, canopy, grass, table...

Make food the star:

- Put TLC into the menu-planning and try out new recipes to keep the meals interesting

- Don't forget about specialty drinks - like chai tea or homemade raspberry lemonade.

- Use pretty food wraps and containers - presentation is everything!

Be active and engaged:

- Vary picnic activities with movement such as running, taking a walk, flying a kite, hula hooping, kicking a ball in an open field

- Bring along books - coloring books, joke books, storybooks, poetry books, the Bible

- Enjoy other activities such as card games, charades, Twenty Questions, building with clay

Add special elements:

- Bring along a bluetooth speaker and a playlist of great theme-appropriate songs

- Bring candles and a lighter for evening, romance-inspired picnics

- Invest in a face painting kit and surprise your child with a personal face-painting session

- Blow up balloons, bring a bubble machine

Get a room!

Do you have a room of your own? A room that's yours and only yours? Most moms don't. But if you're running around taking care of everyone else all day, it makes sense to have your own place of refuge to relax, recuperate, and to just "be".

Is there a spare room in your house, a guest room perhaps, that you can take over from time to time? It doesn't have to be big. And guess what? It doesn't even have to be a room. It can be a comfortable chair, a desk, or some corner of a room that you've laid claim to and that everyone else knows to leave alone (and to leave YOU alone when you're in the space, unless they've been invited).

I love what one of my good friends did. She commandeered the playroom from her two young kids and made it her own mommy space. Chances are it’ll be for just a short season, but a wonderful season indeed!

When you need to recharge or relax, having your own room might prove more valuable than you can imagine. Hang a DO NOT DISTURB sign and use your room to:

School Lunches to be proud of!

Magazine-worthy school lunches. That's what we all want for our kiddos, right? It's actually not so hard to kick the PB&J to the curb when you have fingertip access to the WoodlandsMommy.com "School Lunches" Pinterest board! Your kids will never want to go through the lunch line again! CLICK HERE to view our curated ideas on Pinterest, including this cute lunch box put together by Kitchen Fun with My 3 Sons. *Editor's Tip: We love sending out kid lunches to school and the park in these durable and stylish Bento Boxes [ad].

6 Tips for Starting the School Year Off Right

Cool backpack? Check! Fancy water bottle? Check! Cute, comfy kicks? Check! Seems you've gotten all the fun stuff kids care about, but as they head back to school, it’s also important to provide them with the necessary resources to succeed. As a parent, you can take steps to put your kids on the path toward a successful school year.

To help your children put the best foot forward, consider these suggestions from The Salvation Army, which operates hundreds of low-cost after-school programs for kids of all ages in low-income neighborhoods across the country and understands the importance of setting children up for success all year.