Family Fun Night

We are trying to establish a new tradition in our family - Family Fun Night. In thinking about the future - a future with teen aged children - we wanted to give the kids reasons to want to be home on weekend nights. So we decided to establish Friday night as Family Fun Night. Every week we plan for some fun activity that we will do together on Friday nights. Last Friday it was to cook homemade pasta sauce together and then watch one of the kids' favorite movies. Simple, but the kids - at least the kids old enough to understand - looked forward to it all week. We're not naive. We know that movies and pasta won't exactly be exciting to teenagers who want to be with their friends at high school football games, and the like. But we feel if they have fond memories, and an ingrained sense that Friday night is family night, then they'll have one more anchor to keep them from straying too far later in life. Also, it is definitely increasing our bonding and giving us something to look forward to every week.