Home-Life

Our family is very low-key.  My Husband and I do not sign our kids up for a lot of outside activities because we feel we would be cheating ourselves of some quality family time if we were constantly on-the-go with sports and such.  Some friends have expressed the concern that our kids will grow up the be bitter towards us over this issue, but we can only do what we feel God leading us to do with our family, pray about it, and hope for the best. 

Something else we do work hard at is making our home a fun place to be for our kids.  We make a point of doing things together that are fun and challenging for us all, be it chores (yes, we can have FUN with our kids while doing chores TOGETHER), special projects or fun times together watching movies or going on bike rides.  I love the book Home-Making by J.R. Miller.  Here's a great excerpt from it on this very issue:

No instruction is needed to teach any intelligent parent how to give to the evenings at home a charm which shall make thier influence all-potent.  It is necessary only that parents shall see about doing that which their own hearts tell them so plainly ought to be done.  Of course it will take time.  Something must be left out of life if this is to be done.  But is there anything else in all the round of life's calls, and even its seeming duties, that might not well be left out for the sake of anchoring our children to their homes?  Is there anything else that it would be so fatal and terrible to leave out as to leave our children out to perish in the ruin of the streets, while we are at lodges and operas and parties, or even at church meetings?
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Human lives will never grow into their best in gloom.  Pour sunshine about them in youth; let them be happy; encourage all innocent joy; provide pleasant games for them; ROMP AND PLAY WITH THEM; be a child again among them. 
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If the home is dull and cheerless it must not be considered an indication of extraordinary depravity that the children and young people seek pleasure elsewhere. 
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It needs only a heart in full sympathy with youthful feelings, a little skill in arranging and preparing these pleasures, small expense in furnishing the simple games and other requisites, and interest enough in the matter to devote a little time and pains to it.  There is no parent of ordinary intelligence who may not make his home-life so bright and sunny that no one will ever care to go outside to seek amusement amid the senseless frivolities or the debasing pleasures that the world offers.  Homes that are made thus in all these ways so bright and happy acquire a resistless power over those who live within their doors, which will hold them under its subtle influence wherever they go in all their after years.