new year's family interview

No, this post isn't about picking strawberries, although with how cold and blustery and miserable it was outside today, I surely wish it was warm mid-June, and I had a few pints of fresh strawberries on my kitchen counter.

Rather, it's about a new tradition we began today--kind of on a whim--that I think will be really cool to keep up with as the years go on.

It had us thinking about and sharing our best memories of last year, lots and lots of our favorite things, and looking ahead to 2010.

After a loooong day of cleaning, organizing, and more cleaning and organizing, we finished our dinner and had ice-cream sundaes for dessert.

While we ate our sweets, we took turns answering questions for our New Year's Family Interview, and what I realized--or remembered, rather--is that little ones love talking about themselves more than anything else in the entire world. Of course they would love this. . .

• New Year's Family Interview: This is way too simple, and our family had a riot doing it. I wish I would have started it years ago. . .
  

The New Year's Family Interview is here to download if you'd like. It is a "generic" form--no one's names are typed in; we wrote them at the top of the chart.

Really, the interview consists of one page of questions that I asked Maddy, Owen, Cora, and my husband and then answered myself.

I left a space in the first box on the table for everyone to sign his or her name because I've always been amazed at how frequently my own signature changed throughout my life. I thought it would be especially interesting to watch as Maddy, Owen, and Cora's changes through the years.

Then, I just added a bunch of easy questions, like:

How old are you?
When is your birthday? (always funny to see how little ones answer this one!)
What is your favorite food?
How do you like to spend your time?
What is your favorite book?
What is your teacher's name?
What did you love about last year?
What do you look forward to this year?

Maddy and Owen's Interview answers

And that's that--I jumped around, asking Maddy one question, then Owen a different one, and then Cora a different one from that. We didn't want everyone jumping on one guy's idea and running with it, and our system seemed to work well.

It was completely refreshing and fun to brainstorm all of the exciting things we did this past year--like strawberry picking, going to swim meets, wave-jumping, Trick-or-Treating, day-tripping to DC, Baltimore, Dutch Wonderland, and Annapolis--on an otherwise uneventful winter day.

Later in the night, after everyone had finished, I had each child--and my husband and I--sign our names. I'll pick up a folder in which we can store each year's answers, and after we complete each year's New Year's Family Interview, I think it will be too cool to look back and read the previous year's answers.

Thanks so much to The Activity Mom, Giggles Galore, and Jenny Garland (I hope I got that right!) for sharing the idea of the family interview; I loved it so much when I saw it first, that I took the idea and played with it a bit. Thanks, ladies!

Happy Interviewing, my friends!