We have been spending our summer evenings reading. Daddy has been reading Harry Potter books to us for hours almost every night. We’re into the middle of book 4 now, and the children’s enthusiasm for this nightly ritual has not waned. They even prefer this over a movie night.

You might say it has ignited their imagination.

This one loves to shout spells and play wizard.

Sometimes we read outside together, if its not too hot. Sometimes we’re inside, enjoying the AC. Ian got the ebooks too, so if we’re out at a restaurant he can read to us while we’re waiting for a table, or when we’re waiting for the play to begin.

Ian is a master of funny voices and accents. It’s amazing to hear him read a conversation in a scene with eight wizards in the room, some sounding Scottish, Irish, Russian, English, American, powerful, weak, evil, or snobby. He switches between these various voices with such facility. I applaud at the end of certain scenes because they sound damned difficult to read aloud!

I’m loving this summer’s evening entertainment. I love how we’re all enjoying it, how the Harry Potter books have wide enough appeal that all four of us are engaged. It’s simple, and sweet, and bonding.

New Year’s Eve was delightful. After a Chinese buffet dinner out last night, we enjoyed a lovely NYE celebration with friends. We met new people and enjoyed ourselves immensely. My sweet Asher passed out on the host child’s bed at around 10 p.m., in the midst of a room full of playing, shouting children. Amazing! (There’s something extremely sensible about this boy.)

Today, we cleaned our home and have started the slow process of moving Christmas out of the house. We’ll take our time with that. We’re still enjoying having our tree up, shining cheerfully in our living room. We are still enjoying our Twelve Days of Christmas!

This evening we had a small, simple family ritual to ring in the New Year, and this is the real topic of this post. We made a wishing jar! We cut little pieces of paper and then wrote our wishes and hopes for the new year on them. We included personal goals and things we want for our whole family. We wished for good health, peace, safety, and tranquil minds. We hope for new opportunities and prosperity. We hope for more family vacations and fun with friends. Lucas is hoping to do well in the pentathlon that will be held later this spring. Ian’s planning on running a half-marathon and two-Two-TWO Tough Mudder events this year. Asher might learn to ride a bike without training wheels. Both of our boys will be getting new teachers at the end of this school year, so we’re wishing for good, creative, clever, wonderful new teachers for the fall. I hope for more book-writing and more oil painting. For some of our loved ones, we wished for a wedding; for peace for the living who have recently lost family; and for an acceptable end to a long-held dispute. In short, we want good living, good learning, and plenty of love!

We spoke about what we were writing on our papers, and discussed how we might achieve some of these goals. We feel that thinking about our goals and saying them aloud or writing them out gives us a better chance of achieving them. This is a way of making our dreams manifest; our ritual actions help to make our desires a reality. We can support each other.

We rolled our strips of paper containing our wishes around our pens and pencils to coil them. Then we placed them in our mason jar.

We could have stopped here, sealed up our jar, and been finished. But we wanted to finish the project in a beautiful way. We took turns pouring colored sand into our jar fill of paper wishes. We gently shook our jar side-to-side to get each colored layer to settle down. Asher and Lucas both got to pour in their favorite colors.

And here is our result: our completed 2013 wishing jar. I wish these photos were prettier, but it was evening and I think you can sill get the idea. We now have a rainbow jar full of our hopes and dreams for 2013. The sand layers obscure them and make them private, passers-by in our home cannot read them, which was a concern for our 10-year-old, who now has his own private life and thoughts. We wrote 2013 on the top of the jar. It will stand in our kitchen, or perhaps on a shelf in our home, where it can gently remind us of our goals for our family.

Making this wishing jar felt good. I’m full of optimism and hope for this year!

We all love to dance, but somehow it was our younger son who galvanized this passion into a family ritual. We didn’t set out to make it a regular part of our family life, but before long it was. We hold After-Dinner Discos—dance parties for four that let us all cut loose for a while and get the dishes done. They are one of my favorite family activities.

We finish dinner around 7 p.m. on most nights. My boys go to bed at 8 and they usually shower before bed. Most of the time, we have a lovely 10- or 15-minute window after dinner and we crank up the music and boogie. When the daylight stretches longer into the evening, I confess we party even more, and our dancing spills out into the backyard under the sky.

What kind of music, you ask? Truly, it’s not lyres and pentatonic flutes. The music we play depends on a lot of things: What mood are we in? Is it a night near a holiday? Have we been talking about anything over dinner that brings to mind a song, a style, or a period of history?

Around St. Patrick’s Day, we all kick up our heels to the Pogues, Black 47, and the Chieftains. During Christmas time, we enjoy the Pandora online radio station called “Christmas Lounge.” At Diwali, we might put on some Bollywood film music. We dance to Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra and Aretha Franklin. We shake our booties to Lady Gaga, Cher, and Pink. My older son loves the White Stripes. The little guy loves the Beatles, Bob Marley, and Shakira. I’m fond of Michael Franti and OK Go, and Sting’s music has always been close my heart. My husband is a true musical aficionado, and he always has a fine suggestion for us. Perhaps it feels like ’80s night, or maybe a little big band music fits the bill. We sometimes play a CD called “AM Radio Hits of the ’70s.” Maybe it’s time for some Goa trance or techno. Did you know you could party to a fabulous, techno remix of an autotuned Carl Sagan lecture called “A Glorious Dawn” by Symphony of Science?

My younger son, who is now 4, feels music in his very bones. He’s really got moves, and he’s serious about it, too. He works on a new dance move for a while until he gets it to where it feels just right, to where it’s a facile part of his physical repertoire. Then he works on the next thing. Sometimes I see him mimicking one of us, working out how to make his body do the same thing. There’s no instruction of any kind, and it’s not mechanical or rigid—it’s just a natural learning about his body in space, how it feels to move through the air or place his feet just so. You should see his rock star power slide on his knees.

And he is driven to dancing to just about anything. Beethoven and Mozart work just as well for him as Katy Perry. When the spirit moves him, there’s no standing on the sidelines allowed: “Dance! Mama, Dance!” If I let a little too much of my attention stray to cleaning up our dinner mess, I hear about it. “Mama! You’ve gotta dance with me!” And heaven forbid I’m feeling under the weather. “Mama, I know what will make you better. Let’s dance!”

My older son’s dancing has changed over the years. The carefree quality of his young childhood is moving away gradually. Now, at 9 years old, he sometimes performs Eurhythmy he has learned in school, or attempts some fancy footwork, like a made-up jig or tap routine. He likes to head-bang to electric guitars (which pleases Daddy to no end), and I’ve caught my son playing the air guitar more than a few times. More often than not, these days, my older son’s dancing is morphing into a kind of acrobatic martial art of his own invention, with high kicks and blocking stances. He spins, punches, and dodges imaginary assailants in time to the music.

Before I had children, I used to imagine I’d one day be one of those moms who drives her daughters to frequent ballet lessons. I don’t do that (although if my sons asked, I would). Having boys doesn’t mean I can’t share the gift of music and dance with them, no matter the cultural forces that suggest that boys don’t dance. What better way is there to bring our family together after our long days than to crank up the tunes, revel in our bodies’ abilities, and express ourselves through dance? To get our hearts pumping and put smiles on our faces? What better way is there to have fun and celebrate life?