What do you remember?

Michael and I have recently realized that we only have 4 more years before Hayden  leaves the nest.  It has been very sobering to come to this realization-  he will start high school in less than two weeks and before we blink an eye it will be over!  Because of this newly discovered realization, we have spent a lot of time contemplating what we can do to make an impact on the last 4 years of his childhood.   I have been collecting ideas from all of my  older clients in the salon(where I gain all of my wisdom) and have come up with some really great ideas.  The questions that I have been asking them are:  1. What did you do with your children that made an impact on their lives?  2. What are some of your children's favorite  childhood memories?  I have gotten all sorts of great ideas- all of them included family vacationing, spending time as a family doing various activities and doing something out of the ordinary or unusual.  I decided to put one of the ideas to play and see what happened.  The idea came from a very wise 50 something lady whom I want to be when I grow up.  She told me that one year when she was working and her kids were about my kids age- she took them to the grocery store and gave them all their own carts-  because of her busy schedule they were to be in charge of their own meals for one week (promoting independence).  I too had a really busy work week this week because of all of our time at the cabin so I decided this would be a great week to try this out!  My kids were delighted!  I was pleasantly surprised to see what they put in their carts!  Hayden's cart included items such as:  ingredients to make pizza, spaghetti, chili (with a jalapeno pepper to dice up) cereal, pop-tarts, sandwich stuff, chips- 12pack of root beer and some ice cream.  Olivia's cart had sushi, soup, cereal, popsicles & fruit.  Brittan's cart was full of fruit, bagels, berries and Gatorade.  I must say that it was a very fun experiment- one that you should try!