Family Moments” is about the wonderful experience of connecting as a family.
In this series, we encourage parents to take a look at those truly special family moments. Memories that evoke a feeling of pure joy because they represent quality time with the people we love the most. The realities of modern-day life can make these family moments feel out of our reach a lot of the time. Through this series, parents take a look at the obstacles that can get in the way of these happy family experiences with a view to making some changes so that life can involve more of them. Today we’re speaking to Kellie Kearney.
A little bit about me and my family.
My name is Kellie Kearney and I am a mother of five from Dublin. Two of my children attend school, two are in preschool and the youngest (who is just four months old) is at home with me during the day.
We also have the most lovable Labrador who is almost six years old. My partner is self-employed and works six days a week while I work part-time from the comfort of my home managing social media accounts for various businesses and of course, writing.
We co-parent my eldest daughter with her dad and his wife and we have a great relationship - she's a lucky girl and has two houses to call home.
Our favourite way to spend time together is...
Getting active and outdoors! We love packing a picnic before hitting the road to explore new places. While we have many regular spots that we love to visit, my kids get a thrill discovering new places, bonding as a family and enjoying the little time we get to spend together as a busy family of seven.
Our most cherished family moment is...
We have many cherished family moments but the one that stands out to me the most is when we brought our fifth babog home from the hospital and we all sat together on a two-seater sofa just staring at her.
I watched as all my kids fell deeply in love with their little sister and knew in that very moment how lucky I was and how our family was finally complete (I swear it had nothing to do with the snip, ha!).
I just sat there sobbing while smiling and with each little whimper I let off my kids hugged me a little tighter - I'm not one for being soppy but it was pretty magical and I'll remember it forever.
The thing that gets in the way of us spending time together is...
For us, both being self-employed gets in the way of us spending more time together as a family. It's convenient not having to rely on a childminder during the school year but if I'm not prepping an article or uploading a post my partner is on the phone to a supplier, organising a job or doing hell knows what.
We do have a strict no phones rule at the dinner table, we both put our phones on silent until the last person has left the table to allow us to be completely present, chat and find out how everyone is doing.
Our pledge as a family:
Now that the kids are back at school I made a plan to get as much work done as possible while the baby naps so that it frees up my afternoons to be able to sit and play with them.
So far it's working in my favour but as the littlest gets bigger I'm not sure my plan will work out as well. For me personally, I believe my children, especially the older ones, understand that we need to work hard to keep a roof over our heads while trying to save to buy our own home - so we need to make sacrifices to get there.
However, I do believe sometimes myself and my partner need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. While we dream of owning our own home one day there's no point killing ourselves to get there.
To maximize your quality family time, take our Family Moments Challenge.
We would like to thank Kellie for sharing her special family moments with us. To read more stories just like Kellie's, click here.