Another week down. If your house feels like controlled chaos right now, you're doing just fine. Let's ease into the weekend with a few simple ideas to help everyone reset before Monday rolls around.

This weekend, grab a shoebox or any container you have on hand. Invite everyone to add something small that represents right now—a drawing, a note about their favorite song, a photo, maybe even a joke they can't stop telling. Seal it up and mark it to open next January.

It takes maybe twenty minutes, and it's one of those activities that feels low-key in the moment but surprisingly meaningful when you open it a year later. Kids love seeing how much they've changed, and you'll appreciate the little snapshot of this exact season of life.

Sunday evenings can feel heavy when you're staring down a full week. One thing that actually helps? Spending about ten minutes prepping grab-and-go snacks.

Wash some grapes. Portion out crackers or pretzels into small bags. Cut up cheese or veggies if that's your thing. It's not fancy, but it makes Monday through Friday mornings a little less frantic. And when someone's hangry after school, you've already got something ready.

If you're looking for a board game that works for older elementary kids and up, try Sequence. It's team-based, which is nice because it takes some of the pressure off individual wins and losses. You're matching cards to spaces on the board and trying to get five in a row.

It moves quickly enough that no one loses interest, and the strategy keeps older kids engaged while younger ones can still follow along. Good for a Friday or Saturday night when you want something together but not too complicated.

For younger kids: What do caterpillars turn into?

For older kids: How many hearts does an octopus have?

Answers are at the bottom if you need them.

Short for charisma, rizz refers to someone's charm or ability to attract others, especially in a flirting context. If your middle schooler says someone "has rizz," they mean that person is smooth, confident, and good at talking to people they like. You might hear "he's got so much rizz" or "she rizzed him up," which means she charmed him successfully.

The term got popular on social media and even made it into the Oxford English Dictionary as one of the words of the year. So yes, it's official now. If you want to embarrass your teen, just work it into casual conversation at dinner.

Here's a science one: bananas are technically berries, but strawberries aren't. It has to do with how the fruit develops from the flower. Bananas qualify under the botanical definition; strawberries don't. Kids find this deeply unfair.

And a language arts fact: the shortest complete sentence in English is just two letters—"Go." It has a subject (the implied "you") and a verb. That's all you need.

You made it through another one. Whether your weekend looks like catching up on laundry, sleeping in, or just sitting still for ten minutes with a cup of coffee, take whatever rest you can get.

The school year is a marathon, not a sprint. Some weeks go smoothly. Some are just about making it to Friday. Both count as success.

Wishing you a calm weekend with your crew. We'll be back in your inbox Monday morning.

Trivia answers:

Younger kids: Caterpillars turn into butterflies or moths. The caterpillar forms a chrysalis (butterflies) or cocoon (moths), and inside, it completely reorganizes its body before emerging with wings.

Older kids: An octopus has three hearts. Two pump blood to the gills, and one pumps it to the rest of the body. Even stranger—their blood is blue because it uses copper instead of iron to carry oxygen.