“I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don’t want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift.”
― Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines
5 years ago I created what I thought of as our family mantra.
Be
kind
honest
humble
thankful
travel often
always have a bottle of champagne chilled
The first five might seem more intuitive, but I want to explain why I’m teaching my kids to always have a bottle of champagne chilled..
First, to be age appropriate I’ll change it to sparkeling grape juice 🙂
Next, I’ll clarify – while Josh and I like to practice this with a physical bottle of champagne, the theory is what I want to instill in my kids. I want the idea of celebrating life to always be something they look for and are ready to embrace They don’t need to wait for big life changing events to celebrate the small significant moments that are happening around them.
Live life with the goal of always being ready to celebrate life.
Celebrate when you catch your kids playing nice together. Celebrate with your friends when they have good things happen to them. After a bad day, teach your kids to find the good. Celebrate just because it’s Monday and you need a pick me up. Celebrate national ice cream day because, why not?
Nowadays there is so much focus on big celebrations that turn into stressful “Pinterest worthy” events, in an attempt to impress others. Your kids don’t need that.
They need simple and sincere and they need to learn how to celebrate.
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