Today in Alberta it’s Family Day.  I LOVE this ‘holiday’ for lots of reasons.

We didn’t have a break in February when we lived in British Columbia, and it was SUCH a long time from New Year’s to Spring Break.  Here we have a week off of school beginning with Family Day.  It feels like a much needed break.

Family Day at Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump: my kiddos dancing a friendship dance with a native dancer and other families at the interpretive centre.

Sweetie gets Family Day off of work, as well, and so it’s always just a nice ‘hang around’ kind of day.  We get up whenever, take our time getting ready for the day, and then head out to a local attraction of some sort.  Lots of the Provincial Parks and Museums have special rates on Family Day.  Some, like Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump, a Unesco World Heritage Site, have free admission – at least they did last year – and family activities going on most of the day!  It’s a good day to just be together, no matter what we’re doing.  I love that.

Today Sweetie and Sweetheart enjoyed making breakfast together – OK, so it’s more like brunch!  They laughed and poked at each other while making the meal.  I love that!

My boys are lazy today, still in pajamas, just hanging out playing on the Wii together.  I’ve heard no fighting, no arguing, no harsh words.  I LOVE that!

At breakfast/brunch, we talked about family.  The kiddos asked questions about their grandparents and great-grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins.  We talked about the family they have met, and some family they had never heard of before today.  I think later we’ll draw up a simple family tree so they can see how everyone we talked about fits in the family.  They are curious about our history and always like to know more about family.  I love that!

Because there is no school today, last night the kiddos stayed up later and watched some videos with us.  We were going to watch an Indiana Jones movie with them (their first one) but our VCR seems to have kicked the bucket and we only have the Indy movies on VHS.  So instead we watched one of the DVDs I got recently to review, “Most” – watch for the review soon – and some Looney Tunes.  We just had such a great time together.  I love that!

My kiddos are developing their own sense of humor and personality quirks.  At ages 9, 10, and 11 years old, they are really a lot of fun.  While watching “Most”, which is a pretty serious movie, toward the beginning we had a really good laugh together.

The young boy in the movie says to his father while looking at the stars: “Whenever you see the North Star it means someone is thinking about you.”
MrCutie, our youngest son, talking to the TV: “I don’t see any stars.”
Sweetheart, our daughter, to MrCutie: “It’s because somebody isn’t thinking about you!”
all of us: laughed so hard we had to stop the movie!

Of course, the retelling isn’t as funny as it was in the moment, or even when they were laughing about it again this morning.  But these kinds of fun things are happening more and more often these days, where someone’s sense of humor, that we’ve only seen small glimpses of before, comes out and rocks our world.  My kiddos are fun and funny!  I love that!

Earlier in the day yesterday we had watched the Heritage Classic hockey game as a family.  It was fun to cheer against the Calgary Flames (even though they won) and just hang out together. None of us play hockey, but we’re a good Canadian family and enjoy watching hockey together.  I love that!

I love that we have a day to celebrate family.  And it makes sense, at least at my house.  You know it doesn’t take a big occasion for me to celebrate.  We celebrate individual birthday, we celebrate couples’ anniversaries, we celebrate national and international holidays – why should we not also celebrate the family as a whole?!

We have much to celebrate as a family.  Part of the celebration for me is just letting my little family know that I love them more and more every day.  That is definitely worth celebrating!