Much Needed Family Fun

Now that we are back to our day to day lives, we’re finding it a bit of a struggle to not get sucked back into a society that is all rush rush rush.  Ideas for affordable family fun at home becomes a bit more of a conscious effort.

As I’ve mentioned before, the kids are settling well into their routines of school with a good mix of extra-curricular activities and free-playtime with their friends.  On weekends we also try to visit with our Australian family so that the girls can get re-acquainted with their cousins here.

But we haven’t really done much as a family for fun, aside from just spending time together at mostly at home. 

And on a cold and rainy afternoon this past Sunday on the brink of winter, we changed that.

What did we do?  Well, we had an very affordable family outing to the aquatic centre 30minutes away. During the 12 months that we were away, we were always around water, either at the beach or in the pool at our hotel.  While Maddy learned to swim when we were in Bali at the beginning of our trip, Yasmine’s level of discomfort with water was largely unchanged throughout our year.  When we returned home, we enrolled both kids in swim lessons, which were once a week for 30min.  The lessons are very structured but very effective. To our surprise, Yasmine learned to swim after the first 8 lessons.  So this family excursion to the pool was the first since she learned to swim.

Yasmine during a swim lesson on lifesaving.

What a fantastic experience it was to be in the water with both of the kids able to swim.  And the kids loved it to, being able to interact with each other in a different way than possible before.  Having the freedom to just ‘free swim’ outside of structured lessons was also just what they needed to allow them to explore and spread their wings and to test their abilities.

Too often in the day to day lives of children, they’re told what to do, and when to do it. The fact that they still didn’t want to get out of the pool 2hrs later proved how much they were enjoying themselves.  This outing served as a timely reminder to us how you can have the best of both worlds:  letting kids to just have fun while practicing new skills.

Swim lessons.