Winning at Home: Creating memories
This past week, Jane and I spent some time out at Sandy Pines, an RV park (and so much more!) in Hopkins, Michigan. I’ve been speaking at the chapel service on Sunday morning once each year and then staying out at the campground for somewhere around three decades now. That means that all four of my kids have lots of memories of being there as a family. When we’re at Sandy Pines, we know that means we’ll be driving golf carts around the site and stopping by what we call “The Ol’ General Store.” That’s not the name of the store at this point, and maybe it never was. It might just be a name I gave it years and years ago that stuck with our family. We know that we’ll be playing putt-putt golf and getting ice cream and then playing on the swings and climbing dome afterwards. We know that we’ll be playing card or board games in the evening when we’re back in the trailer.
A combination of tradition and limited cell service creates a perfect opportunity for the Seaborn family to get some quality time together out at Sandy Pines. However, there is another part of the tradition that is less exciting; we’ve learned over the years that being together in a trailer that is much smaller than any house we’ve ever lived in means that we tend to be in each other’s space more than usual. Because of this, some of our biggest family blowups over the years have also happened during these times. That’s just kind of the deal, isn’t it? When you spend more quality time together than usual, you’re likely to have some conflicts that bubble to the surface.
As you may know, all of our kids are grown now, and we have seven grandkids. This past week, all seven of them got to come out and spend some time at Sandy Pines, and Jane and I got to have the experience of retracing some of our steps (literally!) from when we were doing the same things with our kids. Sure, some of the destinations have been updated, and there are definitely many, many more people and trailers than there were when our family first started visiting the campground. But we still have “The Ol’ General Store,” the ice cream shop, the putt-putt golf course, the lake and so many other familiar places. Retracing our family’s steps out there is always a highlight!
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I think that I’m probably more nostalgic than the average person, so maybe these flashbacks hit home for me harder than they do for other people. However, if you have the opportunity to create some kind of lasting family memories today, I want to encourage you to do it. I know that not all families live in close proximity, so you might have to build your family tradition around a holiday when everybody can gather together. You can also get creative with technology to connect and build a tradition that way.
No matter how you do it, I want to encourage you to create memories with your family. Often, we associate this with expensive trips to exotic destinations, but that’s not the only way to create meaningful memories. You can do it around a dinner table at your own house or somewhere else close to home. However you can do it, when you find ways to create memories, you’ll be winning more often at home.
— Dan Seaborn is the founder of the Zeeland-based group Winning at Home, which supports and nurtures marriages and families. Email questions or comments to hometeam@winningathome.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Winning at Home: Creating memories
