A Valentine's tradition your family will never forget

Amidst all the tasty treats and heart-shaped crafts that our family enjoys each year around Valentine’s Day, we’ve designed an extra special tradition that enables us to spend some real quality time together and create powerful, lasting memories.

We call it our “We Love to Be a Family” Day, and, seriously, it’s one of the best traditions we’ve started.

If you’d like to do something like this with your family, here’s a step-by-step guide (and a planning template!) to make it happen without a lot of stress.

But I think we need to start with the ground rules:

1. It doesn’t have to be hard.

2. It doesn’t have to be expensive.

3. It doesn’t have to be fancy.

Here’s a little secret I’ve learned over the years: Children don’t remember frills; they remember substance.

I know that Pinterest is simply loaded with darling ways to cover everything in the house with red ribbons and heart-shaped stickers, and sometimes we just can’t help ourselves. I get that. But our children won’t remember all the intricate details of our pink ceramic centerpieces or the frosted roses on their pancakes. They’ll remember how they felt while they were spending time with us. So unless you just really like spending hours and hours with confetti, glitter and complicated recipes, keep this as simple as possible.

And now, here are five steps to plan your memorable day:

Step One: Do a Five-Minute Brainstorm

What activities would your family enjoy? (We’re going to choose seven of these ideas in the next step, so make this list as broad as you can.)

Consider coupons you have, community events, simple at-home games, service ideas, family members’ favorite foods, etc. Honestly evaluate your energy level, the ages of your children, and the time you’ll have available. The simpler the better.

You might want to record your brainstorm on the planning template that goes with this post.

Step Two: Select the Best Activities

Once you’ve gotten your ideas out on paper, narrow the list to seven activities you know your family will enjoy. Put them in a logical order that will work with the time of day you’ll be out and about, your family budget, and your children’s attention span. (You might want to build up to the “best” activity.)

For our very first “We Love to Be a Family” Day, we did the following:

• Had a group hug (OK, so not all that unique, but everyone liked it)
• Made “I love you” cards for two of our neighbors
• Delivered some homemade bread I’d made the day before to each of those neighbors
• Went to the park for a picnic (enjoying our own loaf of homemade bread)
• Roller-skated around the park together
• Dropped by a candy store to get a couple of treats
• Went to the movie theater for a fun matinee

I really like making bread, so that wasn’t a stress, and everything else took about five minutes to plan. Here’s a little collage of our photos:

Step Three: Write Your Clues

Our children were still pretty young when we first did this, so we simply wrote each activity on a little heart-shaped piece of paper.

Now that they’re getting older, we can get a little more poetic and mysterious.

Step Four: Create Your Treasure Map

We simply opened up a brown paper grocery sack and drew a procession of hearts to match the clues. I think it took me three minutes, max.

But that’s the secret: You have to have a treasure map. It makes it seem so “official.”

Step Five: Identify and Complete Next Actions

On the accompanying planning template, there’s a spot for you to record your associated tasks by context (errands, phone calls, at home, computer and discussions).

On my list, I included things like, “make bread, check showtimes for the movie online, call neighbors to make sure they’ll be home, and talk with Eric to verify the date.”

Easy, right?

On the morning of this special day, we clean the house together, get everyone dressed, and tell our children what a fun day we’re going to have!

We also make plans to get back in time for naps, and I get to bed early the night before so I’m not cranky. A crying mom totally ruins everything. I don’t know why.

(As a little side note, this doesn’t have to happen near Valentine’s Day — or even in the month of February. So if you have morning sickness or a stressful month of basketball practices and choir performances, just stick this idea in your “Someday” file.)

When (if) you do decide to do this activity, be sure to take lots of pictures and turn on fun music. Time dedicated to family makes a great party.

It’s also helpful to plan that you’ll be hormonal and cranky and annoyed with everyone — and anticipate that your children will be whiny, unkind to each other and disobedient. Then you’ll be pleasantly surprised if it isn’t quite that bad! (I don’t mean to sound like a downer, but I want to be sure you don’t set yourself up for failure here.)

I think one of the reasons families don’t typically do things like this is because the effort to keep up with the stuff that already has to bed done is so high that there’s not a lot of room for the creative and fun kind of stuff. But it’s this creative stuff that helps you bond with your children. You’ll feel like a really good parent. Your kids will remember the effort you made (and they’ll forget the fact you wanted to throw in the towel after the first 15 minutes).

My children had such a great time with this in the past that they’ve asked if they can take turns each year planning the surprises.

We don’t make this hard, expensive or fancy, but we put our best energy into showing our children how much we love them, and then all of us feel like this:

<strong.Question: What are some of your most unforgettable family Valentine’s Day traditions?

Challenge: Take a few minutes to plan a meaningful Valentine’s tradition for your family (whether you use this idea or one of your own). Invest in your children’s childhood memories.

(To download the Power of Moms Planning Template, click here.)

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