Top Ten Reasons to Go to Park Day

Slow Family Movement Park day is this weekend Sunday 11/16 2-4 p.m. at Austin's Butler park near Town Lake and the Long Center.

1. Connect with your family
2. Spend time outside
3. Connect with other families
4. Walk the labyrinth
5. Lie on a blanket and take a rest in the sunshine
6. Play in the fountains
7. Meet new people
8. Introduce your kids to new people
9. Celebrate being a family
10. No agenda other than hanging out and playing

Come on out and play!!!

Daily Decelerant

Our friend Adam Butler, marketing genius extraordinaire and super slow dad, inspired the idea of offering a Daily Decelerant to help families slow down, connect and enjoy life just a little bit more. 

So here it is...

Add "rest" to your to do list.

What's your idea of a good rest?

Park Day

Make new friends and meet up with the old at Slow Family Movement's Sunday in the Park. Bring a ball, a bike, a blanket and whatever else you need to spend an afternoon hanging out with friends and other families.

Who: Anyone that wants to join us for a non-agendaed gathering
Where: Butler Park, Austin, TX (near Town Lake and the Long Center)
When: Sunday 11/16 2-4 p.m.
Why: To find your people, create your community, celebrate your tribe

Cancel that appointment

An article I found on the Children and Nature Network's website talks about the overscheduling of kids. It's a question asked regularly by parents, "am I doing enough?" Perhaps we ought to ask ourselves instead, "are we doing too much?"

After you read this, cancel that appointment and get to the greenbelt instead.

Slow weekends. Ah.

Camping is slow. We just had 3 nights and 4 days with 15 kids and 13 adults in 9 tents and a 20 pound brisket and a few cold beers and one amazing private group site in a Texas State Park perched right on the Lower Colorado River. Cold nights. Colder mornings warmed by the sun hitting our little valley right as the morning's embers were reignited in the firepit. Clear spring fed pools of water just cold enough to get in and make you run back to the firepit pronto.

No telephone connection. No electronics. No need for any kind of entertainment other than hiking, wading, sitting around the fire and singing, singing, singing. Loved, loved, loved it!!! Can't wait to do it again soon. My cup totally runneth over.

What I learned

This week I learned that when we are spacious in our time we all get along better. Of course that seems like an obvious thing to have taken me 11 years and four kids but it hit me this past weekend like a lightning bolt. It was a Saturday that held a few errands and a few friends but there was beautiful spaciousness to it all and because of that it all felt easy and it felt too like there was time for a lot of yesses where otherwise there might have been no's.

Now that I have touched and taken this lesson I will try to remember it always. I will remember it when people ask me to volunteer for just one more committe, when we are invited to parties, when we are asked to come and play, when we are taking on projects and whenever we are making family plans. I will say no to the invitation on a Saturday afternoon if there is already something on the calendar for Saturday morning. I will schedule family on a Saturday morning and I will put it on the calendar on occasion so that our time together isn't dismissed as non-essential. I will try not to bite off more than we can chew and I will try to allow ample time for everything that I do bite off. I will try. I will try. I will try.

It may bug my kids on occasion at the time the decision is made. But they get over that quicker than they get over having a freaked out mom. And I may sometimes have no choice in having busy days but there are days too that even when I think I have no choice, I realize that actually, I really do have a choice.

Spaciousness so there is time to see each person. Aaah. Lessons. I love that they just keep coming.

We're getting ready to launch...

...so stay tuned. We're busy creating a series of ebooks and other tools on ways you and your family can intentionally and mindfully slow it all down. Keep your ears peeled and your thoughts tuned to slowing it down one step at a time.