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 Tara Anderson.

A little bit about me and my family.

My name is Tara and I am a first-time mum to my beautiful baby Gene who is nearly fourteen months old. I am wife to Daniel who is an amazing husband and friend and I don’t know what I would do without him. We also have two dogs, Ruby & Teddy, who are a huge part of our family too. 

We live in Dublin and are both juggling the family/work balance as best we can.

Our favourite way to spend time together is...

On our days off work. We try and have one or two days off together in the week to spend together as a family and those days are always my favourite days. We live near Town so we always just walk in and go to the playground with Gene and for lunch somewhere. 

I also love when we are on holidays and in ‘switch off’ mode, which unfortunately isn’t as often as I would like but I love that sense of no time constraints, no meetings, and just proper quality time together.

Our most cherished family moment is...

For me, the special moments have been at the simplest times, like the three of us just having a cuddle and feeling happy and content. Gene taking his first steps recently was a special moment. We were so excited and proud.

I love when Gene is in a giddy humour and tries to make us laugh. In those moments when we are both looking at him adoringly, there is nowhere on earth I would rather be.

The thing that gets in the way of us spending time together is...

For us, that is definitely work. We both obviously have to work to pay the bills but I know we are lucky as Gene is with either myself or Daniel 95% of the time.

I am self-employed which I wouldn’t change but it really is such a full-time job and by full-time I mean 24/7. Some days I would love to have a job that I can leave at 5 pm on a Friday and not think about again until Monday morning. Obviously since becoming a mum that is a full-time job too, so finding the balance can be hard.

Our pledge as a family:

We pledge to never stop setting aside lots of family days.

Also, I think I need to remind myself that things like housework can wait. What's a few more hours spent cleaning when it means I can be spending quality time with Gene?

I think we try to do everything and are hard on ourselves when we don’t tick everything off by the end of the day, but there is always tomorrow.

To maximize your quality family time, take our Family Moments Challenge.

We would like to thank Tara for sharing her special family moments with us. To read more stories just like Tara's, click here.