When We #GoTheExtraSmile To Bring Our Kids To The Hapee-est Place On Earth

We often hear the saying that “happiness is a choice” and as parents, my husband and I always tell our daughters that we don’t have to wait to have a perfect life in order to be happy. The important thing always is to focus on what we are grateful for and make the best of it.

One of our happiness as a family is to travel together. When my husband and I met each other back on our college days, we didn’t have money to travel but still, we found opportunities to explore places. When we had our two daughters, our family travels were the most special days for us. These travel moments were not necessarily going to far places, but we also enjoy short hotel staycations and sometimes, we also travel with other family members. No matter how short our travel would be, we try our best to plan on how to make our trips memorable, by playing games when we are at the hotel, recording some videos while on location, and similar stuff. Then we get back home, we watch all our recorded videos and laugh on our photos. Then we will miss our travel experiences over and over again. I truly believe that these experiences strengthen our bond further as a small family.

The most memorable one though which I’d like to share in this post was our first travel to another country to bring the kids to what they call the happiest place on earth, HongKong Disneyland. For my husband and I, I’d say that we really went the extra mile when we did this. First of all, we didn’t have any experience at all. Both of haven’t been able to travel overseas and we didn’t have our passports then. For some maybe, this was an easy feat. But for us then, we were nervous because it would be in another country, and we haven’t even tried traveling together in a plane. Everything would be a first time for us.

But you know, when we thought of how happy our daughters would be, meeting their favorite Disney characters, and playing in a beautiful place like Disney, these really inspired us to do what’s needed. It was a year-long saving of money for the plane tickets, the accommodation and the allowance. And we don’t have that much, you know.

Watch the video of our first ever trip which my husband edited. Whenever my husband and I watch it, we feel proud that we have overcame the fear of trying new experiences with our daughters. We also felt how happy our girls that day and that made us doubly happy as their parents.

Traveling together is not the only opportunity to bond together with the kids. In fact, we also love to stay at home most of the time, specially when it’s school vacation. And I love to think that even if our daughters already have friends and they do want to hang out as teens, the girls will usually prefer to stay at home, sleep longer and just stay with us, watch Netflix or Fox Movies, or just eat together on days when I’m inspired to cook a new dish.

Having fun together need not to be complicated. In fact, even the most mundane tasks at home can be made fun and be a time to about things and about life. With smaller kids, we can teach them the simplest things, even as simple as brushing their teeth, in a fun way, such as the way Cheska and Doug make their brush time a Hapee time. Watch their cute family video Hapee Kiddie : Tooth Tales video below : #BrushTimeHapeeTime 

As parents, going the extra mile in making our kids happy is not wrong. We should not be afraid that we will spoil them, because doing happy things together is also a good way of teaching them the ways of life. It is a matter of balance of teaching them that there are things that can be done through hardships and that there are also opportunities to enjoy life as a form of reward.