When they’re young, I think letting kids play a little bit or walk around before the food arrives helps them sit more calmly in the high chair when it’s time to eat. Of course, feeling comfortable letting them play is a challenge! So even though we don’t typically eat early meals, sometimes going to a restaurant earlier in the evening or lunch time avoids the rush. I think just having a little extra space with fewer people can make the entire experience calmer and totally worth the off hours!

I always try to have something in my bag to entertain the kids quietly when they get bored. The paper kids menus and crayons they hand out at many restaurants often work great for a while, but books, a few bristle blocks, or wax sticks are also nice to have on hand for continued entertainment!

If you live near a big city, an outing to the city can be a fun birthday party idea for tweens or teens. When we lived near Chicago, my tween requested a day trip to the city with a few friends. We ate at a fun restaurant, visited an attraction or two, then rode the train back home. She loved it!

Murder mystery dinner party. You can choose from a bunch of different game options and themes online (we've gotten a couple from Amazon) for a really fun and creative birthday party for teens. The games are usually for about a dozen players, though they can be modified for slightly more or less, too. Just be sure to read through the instructions in advance, as you'll need to do a little preparation before the party. My teen has requested these 2 or 3 times, and we've enjoyed each one!

Have kids help put away leftovers! Taking off and putting on Tupperware lids, opening and closing Ziploc bags, twisting jar tops...all of these require fine motor skills they'll be honing while they help you clean up.

My kids will take any excuse for water play! Try giving your toddler a small cup of water, an eyedropper, and an empty ice cube tray. They can use the eyedropper to transfer the water from the cup into the ice tray.

Matchbox/Hot Wheels cars

Mini figurines like dinosaurs or animals

Try making "build your own" meals. Put out a bunch of components and let each person pick and choose what they want. You're only making one meal, but it's customized for each person. We do build your own salads (greens and veggies, beans, chicken, cheese, croutons) or rice bowls (protein, rice, cheese, salsa, avocado, beans, mango) and these go over really well with my kids and their different food preferences. Picky eaters can enjoy their dinner "deconstructed" if they don't want their food touching.

I always made more types of vegetables than they needed and they could choose one NOT to eat.

Pass the Parcel! We'd never heard of this one until we saw the Bluey episode about Lucky's Dad's Rules (best. episode. ever.), and now my kids want to play it ALL the time. Similar to Hot Potato, kids pass around a wrapped gift while music is playing. When the music stops, whoever is holding the gift gets to unwrap it. According to the Bluey episode, the original way to play is to wrap a single gift in various layers of wrapping paper, so you go through several rounds before a child actually opens the gift, which they get to keep. Another version of the game includes small prizes within each layer of paper, and strategically stopping the music to make sure every child gets a prize.

Hot potato. We just had a birthday party for a five-year-old, and ended up playing hot potato along with pass the parcel. Though I’ve loved pass the parcel since we discovered it on Bluey, think the kids enjoyed hot potato even more, as they were able to toss the “potato” (we used a small plushy) to each other out of order, which made the game more active and the kids more engaged. When the music stopped, whoever was holding the plushy got out, and the last person in got the prize. This kept the kids from slow passing, too, since the goal was NOT to get caught with the plushy!

Picking weeds outside, watering flowers/plants/herbs and raking leaves is a chore that my kids find fun. (Added bonus if you buy their own gloves/watering can).

Laundry is a wonderfully adaptable chore that kids of all ages can help with in some capacity. Toddlers and preschoolers can help put laundry into the washer and dryer and take it out again when it’s done, while elementary-school-aged kids can wash, dry and put away their clean clothes with varying degrees of help from you. Tweens and teens can probably handle everything on their own as long as you’ve shown them what to do beforehand.

My husband and I try to plan 3-4 meals for the coming week before the weekend is out, so we can make a plan for grocery shopping and actually cooking. We often invite the kids to each pick one meal for the week as well - they tend to eat it better when they've been involved in the planning in some way!

We have a binder of "greatest hits" recipes that we use almost exclusively for our family dinner rotation. My weekly meal planning involves picking recipes from the binder each weekend to meal plan for the week ahead, and I go to the grocery store once. I just have too many new recipe failures to bother wasting my time with trial and error on our busy weeknights. I'd rather cook something tried and true, and my kids would much rather eat something they already know they love. On the rare occasion that I cook something new and the family loves it, it gets printed out and added to the binder.