When you become a parent, you expect to experience newfound joys in your life and you do.  But there are many things they don’t tell you about parenting. The statement parenting is hard work is probably one of THE biggest understatements of all time. One unexpected but wonderful and surprising benefit of being a parent is it gives you an excuse to do things that make you feel like a kid again.

This week’s Happy Act is a bonus 8-Happy-Acts-in-one. It’s my personal list of top eight acts that will make you feel like a kid again that will transport you back to a time when you lived life in the moment and didn’t have a care in the world.

Eight acts to make you feel like a kid again

1. Play a game of laser tag
2. Have a cannonball contest (might want to wait for summer for this one)
3. Fly a kite
4. Go toboganning
5. Make a snow angel
6. Eat ju jubes
7. Catch a snowflake on your tongue
8. Spend the afternoon in a water park

For those of you who don’t have kids, here’s a secret: you don’t need to have kids to do things to make you feel like a kid again. Go toboganning anyway, or better yet, offer to take a niece or nephew or friend’s kids for the day—it will give you an excuse to be a kid again and give the parents some much needed adult time.

Have fun being a kid again! What’s your favourite thing to do that takes you back to your childhood? Leave a comment.

Some tips for this week: if you live in the Kingston area, there’s nothing better to beat the mid-winter blahs than to spend the afternoon at the Ambassador water park. For just $8 a person, you can wash away the winter blues screaming down the water slide, doing laps in the pool or luxuriating in the hot tub as you watch the snow fall outside. Our absolute favourite family winter getaway is Great Wolf Lodge. While it’s a bit pricier, it’s definitely worth it. We find one night’s lodging and two days in the water park leaves us with a water-logged grin on our faces and I never get tired of seeing the 70-year old grandparents giggle like 7-year olds as they squirt their grandkids with the huge water guns.  Back in Kingston, an afternoon of action-packed laser tag at Putt ‘n Blast in Frontenac Mall is SO much fun.