60 One-Minute Memory Makers
Fun and Easy Ways to Create Family Memories That Last a Lifetime
By David & Claudia Arp

Introduction

We’ll never forget those few weeks before Joel left home for college. It was summertime, but the living was anything but easy. Our goal that summer was to have one more family vacation, but the harder we tried to work things our, the more difficult the scheduling became.

Jarrett, our college junior, just got home from Airborne School, had a job as a driver at local car dealership. Jonathan, entering the ninth grade, was busy with tennis tournaments. Joel, the college freshman, was trying to squeeze the last few pennies out of his maintenance job at the tennis club – while recovering from mono and getting ready to leave for college. And we, as parents, were trying to figure out how to provide our boys with one more family memory – but nothing was working! Finally in desperation, we called a family caucus. We had lowered our sights and were now trying to find one 24-hour period when all of us could break away for a mini-vacation. Even that was not coming together.

Jarrett finally asked, "What’s the big deal? Why is it so important to you that we do this?" We explained that we wanted to build one more family memory before Joel officially left home.

Joel answered, "Mom, Dad, do you know how many family memories we have? We have memories on top of memories! I don’t need more memories to take with me – I have memories up to here!" Slowly, it began to sink in – our attempt to build one more memory through a family vacation was not going to work! The major memory-building time for our family was history. Gone were the golden opportunities and moments of childhood. Our boys were moving into adulthood. We were glad that they had an abundance of good memories to take with them. We all desire that someday our children will leave home with their share of good memories. No one would way their goal is to build no memories! But life can be so busy and complicated; we can have good intentions and simply lack the time to carry them out! Some make the mistake of only looking for large blocks of time to build memories. But in today’s rat race that time may not be found! Building memories does take time – but it doesn’t necessarily take large blocks of time! Family vacations are great when we can pull them off. But the majority of memories we cherish as a family happened in the little bits of time – like the time we had popcorn for breakfast or cashed in summer coupons for Just-You-and-Me Times or adopted our family puppet called Hans.