Donna Bozzo - What the Fun?!: 427 Simple Ways to Have Fantastic Family Fun

The most important thing is to enjoy your lifeto be happyits all that matters.

A UDREY H EPBURN

Where is the fun in your familys life?

You know, the F-U-N?

Are you trying to figure out where it went? Is it trampled by should-haves and would-haves and if-I-could-haves, worries, mental juries, and frazzled scurryings-about? Is it buried under endless routines or lost in a long line of boring carpools?

Then this book is for you.

It is so easy to lose our foothold in fun. Keeping up with this crazy game of family life gobbles up our days and takes a tasty chunk of our nights. Time magazine is now calling parenting Americas most competitive adult sport as we drown in endless kid athletic schedules, music lessons, and enrichment activities. We are stressed, we are tired, and somehow in the tornado of our crazy, jumbled days we are still bored. Weve sunk so deep in the day-to-day crunch of life weve forgotten how to make things fun. And weve forgotten (or maybe we never knew) how important it is for us to enjoy our days together. Day by day, we are missing out on the true prescription for a good lifeFUN.

Happiness must be grown in ones own garden.

M ARY E NGELBREIT

Want proof? Just look to the science of fun. Creating more fun in your life makes you happier, makes you healthier, and helps you live longer. Researchers, philosophers, physicians, and social reformers have spent lots of time finding out what we still know today: fun is good for you. Sigmund Freud pioneered many studies proving that fun helps us connect and wards off fear, anger, anxiety, and other undesirable emotions. And other studies followedthe biggest tracking the lives of 180 Notre Dame nuns for five decades. It turns out the happier nunsnuns described as focusing on joylived as much as ten years longer. Bingo!

Never, ever underestimate the importance of having fun.

R ANDY P AUSCH, T HE L AST L ECTURE

Creating more fun in your days is good for your health. Dutch sociologists found that happiness protects against illness, with the most satisfied people gaining almost an extra ten years of lifealmost as powerful a measure as quitting smoking by age thirty-five. And creating fun and happiness in your life has absolutely no side effects. Whats more, fun is fantastic for your kids. According to Psychology Today, creating a happy childhood for your childrendefined as doing things as a family and creating fun traditionsgives kids greater social connectedness and an enhanced sense of self and healthy behaviors. Plus, get this: not having fun