An Update on Positive Changes in 2023
As we went into the new year, I wrote an article about changes I wanted to make for our family in 2023. After one month, I am pleased with our progress.
Our nights as a family were never bad before, but they have definitely improved. We play games together instead of watching TV. We play family Trivial Pursuit, where there are questions for kids and adults. My son Eric loves the Strat-O-Matic baseball board game I bought him for Christmas. I played this same game with my brother when we were kids. Eric and I set up an 8-team bracket where we pick four teams. After each game, we select an MVP. The Yankees beat the Phillies in the first tournament finals with Aaron Judge and Aaron Rizzo hitting big home runs along the way. My daughter Elizabeth and I continue to play Nerts, where she dominates. We haven’t been able to get Eric to play yet. But our babysitter is now playing cards regularly with Elizabeth at the end of the day as I come home from work.
When we moved into our house eight years ago, it came with a gas fireplace in the living room that we had never used. Listening to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book inspired me to get the fireplace working. I called a local fireplace/chimney company to clean it and ensure everything was working correctly. We now use the fireplace every night and love the warmth it brings into our house.
One of the most significant changes is our use of electronic devices. I use our home wifi system to pause Elizabeth’s phone and Eric’s iPad. The kids can request 15 minutes with their device if they give a valid reason. When they do, I set the timer on my phone and then pause their device afterward. Elizabeth and Eric both have Chromebook computers that they use for school once in a while. I’m ok with them going on there to look something up. Although it’s similar to the phone and iPad, they don’t get hooked on using it the same way. They use the computers for their needs and then jump off it better.
During the weekend, I take about an hour each morning to work out at our house on the treadmill and weights. In the past, the kids would watch mindless TV or be on their devices while I was working out. Now, when I open the workout room door to hear what they’re doing, I hear talking, and laughing. I hear them having fun together… and the occasional bickering between sister and brother. It is so much better than the silence before.
For TV, I get Hulu streaming instead of regular cable. So, I can pause our AppleTV with our home wifi system the same way I pause their phones. We have been much more selective about what we watch on TV. It is not on at all during the day. Now when we watch it, it is more of a treat. We watch the new episodes of “All Creatures Great and Small” and “Celebrity Jeopardy,” where the clues are a little easier for all of us. I am pleasantly surprised that the kids both look forward to watching the new episodes of “The Chosen.” Hollywood makes very few good movies anymore. But we have enjoyed some recent documentaries about former Iowa Hawkeye athletes Nile Kinnick (“Kinnick”) and Chris Street (on the Big Ten Network).
We have had the most fun watching the Iowa Hawkeye basketball games this winter. Every game is exciting. And, while I love Iowa football coach Kirk Ferentz and am thankful for his success over the past 20+ years, it is nice to watch an Iowa team that scores a lot of points. With the lights turned low and our fireplace glowing, it reminds me of winter nights growing up in Iowa when our family would watch Coach Lute Olson’s and later Coach Tom Davis’s Hawkeyes battle Bobby Knight’s Indiana Hoosiers, Gene Keady’s Purdue Boilermakers, Jud Heathcote’s Michigan State Spartans, Lou “Do” Henson’s Illinois Fighting Illini, among other Big Ten rivals. What a cast of characters! Here is hoping that Coach Fran McCaffery can take this year’s Hawks a little farther into March like those Iowa teams of the ’80s and ’90s.
At night, I have been reading to both kids from chapter books at bedtime. Elizabeth had always wanted me to just lay down with her at night. That is nice, but I now introduced a book called “All-of-a-Kind Family” about five sisters growing up in early 20th-century New York City. I saw it in an Annie Holmquist article in The Epoch Times and thought I would give it a shot. We read the first two books in the series and now reading the third. Elizabeth enjoys the middle sister Henny’s antics most of all.
Eric and I have read a book named “Call It Courage” about a Polynesian boy who conquers his fear of the ocean and grows into a confident young man. We are now reading “Little Britches,” about an 8-year-old boy and his family moving from New Hampshire to a ranching life in Colorado in 1906.
I am thankful for the joy that these minor changes have brought us. It was a good reminder that we must be constantly vigilant about avoiding bad habits and limiting the further intrusion of electronic devices into our lives. It is too easy to drift off in the wrong direction.
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