Fullam Family Founders' Day

Saturday we celebrated Fullam Family Founders' Day (aka our eleventh anniversary). Founders' Day is a new tradition for us, and while we realize it may not be a good fit for every family, we sure had a blast this year!

We planned a fun day for the whole family, centered around spending time together and being thankful for the family God has given us. In the morning, we all ate breakfast together, then spent the morning playing at the activity pool. While the kids ate lunch with Daddy and then took a nap, I had a much-needed appointment to get my hair cut short (it was just a coincidence that this was scheduled on Founders' Day--I just REALLY needed a haircut and found a Groupon to do it cheap!). After naptime, we took the kids (for the first time EVER) to the Playland at a well-known fast food restaurant, where Daddy and Mommy ate cheap junk food, Mommy got a giant Diet Coke with unlimited refills, and Sam ran around playing like crazy--he thought it was so cool. Oh, how little it takes to make us happy! Ha!

Interspersed throughout the day, especially while driving in the car, Steve stressed to Sam the significance Founders' Day. Our anniversary is the celebration of the beginning of our family and a remembrance that our family exists to bring God glory. For the first time, we began to communicate to Sam that he can look forward to starting his own family someday and the responsibility it entails. As our kids get older, we look forward to using the celebration time to emphasize our family's set of core values, as well. Since Steve's time with the kids is much more limited than mine, he especially enjoyed including the kids in our anniversary celebration.

What about "alone time" and putting our marriage as a priority before our children? Well, we certainly believe it is important (and biblical). But Steve and I just aren't the type of people to hang a lot of expectations on a single day. We find that when we are significantly investing in our marriage year-round, we don't have to stress out about making our one day of anniversary extra-special and exclusive. Admittedly, with two little ones to keep us busy, we often fall short in making those investments, but with the establishment of Founders' Day, we have recommitted to doing just that.

A side benefit of Founders' Day is that we don't have the stress of coordinating childcare while Dad and Mom go out for an evening alone. With Ruth still nursing, going out while leaving the kids at home would require us to either go out late in the evening (after the kids are in bed) or schedule a rushed date while someone else handles the fussy-tired-hungry baby. Since the kids sleep well at naps and at night, we find that we have plenty of "alone time" (both for fun and for state-of-the-family meetings) after bedtime and during weekend naps; we just find creative (and cheap!) ways to have fun at home. This arrangement seems to work well for us, at least at this life stage, when it is almost a necessity.

Here's a picture of Sam stuck in the Playplace "bubble." Maybe we DID get some alone time after all--ha!