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If you’ve ever gone running with your child, then you know it has both mental and physical benefits.

Kids tend to do funny things during a run, like happily chatter nonstop, skip, and on occasion, run backwards, while you struggle for breath. My nine year-old runner, a kid with severe middle-child syndrome, amuses me with observations that keep my mind off the aches in my rapidly aging body.

In addition to the mood boost that comes with a chirpy child, studies have shown that children who take up running do permanently good things to their bodies. Adult runners who have resumed the sport after a long hiatus have significantly better Vo2 max than their counterparts.

Simply put, running track in high school gives you a better heart and circulatory system later in life—even if you’ve been a couch potato for years. (more…)

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The arrival of a new year is always a time of reflection and vision. Reflection on where we’ve been, what we’ve accomplished, personal growth and family development over the preceding year. A time to look forward, make plans and renew our dreams and vision for the twelve months stretching out before us like a clean blackboard on the first day of school.

I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions. They seem an exercise in futility to me, but I do make New Year Wishes and spend some time renewing the focus of our family, defining our dreams and laying out the path we hope to take in big, general, terms in the coming year.

Here are a few ideas that I’ve found helpful this year, and links to a few folks you might want to meet.

1. Choose a word to meditate on

I’ve often reduced a New Year’s Wish to a few words that I’ve repeated to myself throughout the year to keep my focus, remind me of my goals and to help me move forward in the direction I wish to go. Last year’s words were:  Live With Presence, Purpose & Joy. The year before that: Love, Peace, Renewal.

My friend Kiran Bradley posted something recently that challenged me to distill it further, to get it down to just one word for the year. I’m not sure I can do it, but I’m going to try. It needs to be a word that will affect all areas of life, or reflect desired growth, or otherwise move us forward. A word we can meditate on daily.

Her word for the year?

Altruism.

That’s a really good word. There are so many ways that could affect daily life, the lives of my family members, friends, strangers, the world, in a positive manner. So many ways it could change me, change us. I’m tempted to steal it, but I won’t. I’ll come up with my own word.

What’s your word?

2. A Theme For Your Year

 Maybe one word for the year is too narrow. Maybe you need something a little bigger. Maybe your year needs a theme. An over-arching subject to help you unlock your potential. Something bigger than yourself to work towards and work at each day. Or maybe something small, and personal, and completely internal that you keep chunking away at a little at a time.

In 2007 our theme was Launching The Edventure Project. We worked every day towards the goal of cutting loose the bowline on life and starting our open-ended world tour. It was a really fun theme for the year. This year my theme is much smaller, it’s centered on working on incorporating The Four Agreements into my mind on a daily basis. It matters to no one but me, but it still matters.

What could your theme be this year; personally, or for your family?

3. A Vision Chart

 I’ve seen lots of versions of this project, personally, for families, for corporations. The basic idea is the same: Create a chart that is full of your vision, or your dreams, for the year.

This is a really fun one to do as a family. Everyone chooses a few things that they’d really like to do, see, become, learn, or accomplish in the coming year and you create a poster out of it. Perhaps you cut pictures out of magazines or print them off of the internet. Perhaps you draw your pictures, or you write big, bold words. Perhaps you use art, or music, or poetry to represent your vision. The possibilities are endless!

When you’re done, you have a wonderful graphic interpretation of your vision, something to look at every day and keep you focused.

Encourage a combination of big, grandiose, “crazy” dreams as well as small, personal, intangible dreams and everything in between. Don’t allow anyone to belittle anyone else’s vision. Don’t ever say, “We can’t do that,” or, “That’s impossible!” The point is to dream big dreams together, imagine the possibilities, become energized by life and for life. The sky’s the limit!

What’s going on your dream chart?

4. Things You can do without

 I found this a fascinating thought.

My friend Melissa Banigan brought it to my attention through her New Year’s post on her blog. She didn’t make resolutions this year, instead, she and a few friends wrote down on slips of paper things they could do without this year, things they intended to do without, and then tossed them into a fire together.

How refreshing is that?

Instead of trying to change things, trying to recreate yourself, trying to cram more, better, faster, skinnier, more productive things into your already bursting at the seams life, why not let some things go?

Why not create some space in your life and mind?

Why not weed the garden and then see what lovely things plant themselves in the fertile ground of you?

Things I can do without this year:

• Guilt
• Drama
• Expectations

5. Create Your Own 12 Step

I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t have a big dream, or a big goal. Some people wear them on their sleeves. Other people hide them quietly in the back of their hearts, under a pile of old books. Everyone has one.

So why don’t more people achieve them? Why don’t more people live their dreams or reach their goals consistently?

Lots of reasons:

• Life overwhelms us
• The devil is in the details
• Time & Money concerns
• Lack of focus

What I love about Justin Mussler and his family is that they have a big dream, a huge, overwhelming goal, they wear it on their sleeves and their working it out in front of the whole world. That takes a lot of guts! What if they fail and everyone sees? They won’t. Justin has made this coming year in to a 12 step program for reaching their goal. Well, a 52 step program actually, one step per week.

Couldn’t you do the same thing? Take your big dream and break it down, month by month, week by week and cut that massive, hard to swallow elephant into bite sized pieces! It’s the way any overwhelming task gets accomplished.

Where would you be in 1 year with focus?

• Out of debt?
• Living in a foreign country?
• Traveling for a living?
• In a new career?
• Speaking a new language?
• Adopting kids?
• Changing the world through volunteer work?

Why can’t you be there? Why CAN’T 2012 be your year? Your kids’ year? Your family’s year?

The answer: It can be.

What will YOU do in 2012?

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I’m not saying these are perfect, but I’ve run through 77 iterations of my recipe and this is the best I have made yet and I’m done messing around. I’ve tried yogurt and cottage cheese and buttermilk and all sorts of other stuff but these hit the spot and I can walk into just about any kitchen and whip these up in no time.

These are not some sort of crunchy earth muffin tree hugging whole wheat flapjack pancakes. No sir, that’s not what we are here for – this is about pancake delight, not a high-fiber diet or bonding with mother nature. This is about pleasing that little kid down in your soul (the one your job keeps trying to wrestle to the ground and strangle to death, slowly, while it smiles gleefully) and your real little kids sitting at the breakfast table with silverware in hand chanting “pancakes! pancakes!” (more…)

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From the time he was little Elisha has been my grocery store buddy. He loved nothing more than to have my undivided attention for thirty minutes each way in the car to talk my ears off. He loved the anticipation of wondering if I had a stray quarter in my purse so he could ride the yellow horse that neighed and played the stereotypical cowboy music outside the grocery store. He loved to push the cart.

Our grocery store has two sizes of carts: the regular sized ones that were strewn all over the parking lot and inside the store, and the few and far between, super huge carts which are identifiable by their red rims and the trail of duckling children strung out behind whichever Mama is pushing.

Small families do not use these carts. In fact, I think most of the members of the “red cart club” know each other… and a good proportion of us home school our kids, which means that we take our kids WITH us to the store on a Wednesday afternoon. Come to think of it, maybe that red rim is a warning sign to all of the other shoppers: “Look out, family of eight coming your way!”

Sometimes I need two red carts.

Elisha pushes that cart with the concentration of an Indy car driver. He always cites the rule to me upon entering the store:

• “If I touch anybody or anything with my cart I lose the privilege to drive, right Mom?”
• “Right.”

I think driving the cart must be the video game deprived child’s answer to “Driver.”

He maneuvers that cart around big displays of chips and candy, milk and meat, peering under the handle bar with his eyes peeled for old ladies with walkers and little children who’ve lost their parents.

Survive the obstacle course and win the game. Five extra points if he doesn’t break the eggs.

It occurred to me, in the produce section of one grocery expedition, that among the many things we teach in the grocery store, I have overlooked Geography. It happened over a five pound bag of carrots, conspicuously marked with “grown in Canada.”

• “Look Elisha, these are Canadian carrots… remember that carrot farm in Nova Scotia where we took a rest and they told us all about carrot cultivation and harvest?”
• “Yeah, and we ate strawberries…” he added.

We reminisced about that lovely afternoon as we picked up our onions and potatoes, grown in California and Idaho, respectively.

The Games

When Hannah and Ben were two I made grocery bingo games.

• On each card were pictures of various items found in the store.
• I provided each kid with a page of dot stickers and they passed a pleasant hour hunting for tomatoes and artichokes while I shopped.

Later we made math games and treasure hunts out of our shopping trips.

• Each child has $15 of imaginary money to spend, they need something from each food group to win.
• Older children figured unit costs for canned and boxed goods with a goal of saving the family $1 per trip
• A list of ten obscure items was provided to each child and the winner was the fellow who found the most of the “treasures” on his list.

Recently the oldest two have taken over half of the shopping list and take their own red cart around the store.

I’ve decided to institute a new game: Grocery Geography.

I’m going to have two versions:

The little people version: in which they are given a list of countries and we look together for items originating in those countries.

The continents version: in which they carry a laminated map and add dots for each food they find for a particular continent.

The geography super stars version: in which points are awarded for each country you find that no one else finds, and each food you find that no one else finds.

• Here’s a hint: spend time in the deli section where the fish and meats are. Look also in the produce section (for carrots!)
• Keep in mind that the foods must actually be PRODUCED in a foreign country, not just be a parody of food from that country. Example: Thai Coconut Milk does not count towards Thailand because it is produced in southern California.

Let me know if you decide to play along and send in the weirdest foods and countries your kids find… I’m sure the results will be different in different grocery stores around the country!

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Tradition:  noun.  The practice of passing down customs, beliefs or other knowledge from parents to their children.

When I was a new mom (I had just one child, and he wasn’t quite 2 yet) my brother gave me some interesting advice.  He said his only regret was not developing family traditions.  You see, his son was grown and living in another state.  They rarely saw him as there was no tradition to pull him home.  You know, the “But we always…(fill in the blank) for Memorial Day, Christmas, Birthdays, etc.”   My brother is of the generation that rebelled against the establishment and tradition for tradition’s sake.  So they carefully raised their son with no traditions.

As parents trying to craft an Uncommon Childhood, we might be tempted to do the same.  After all, aren’t traditions just meaningless repetition? (more…)