Parenting Guru: The Family that Plays Together Stays Together

This year, rather than compose my usual holiday newsletter, my family came up with the fun idea of creating a record album cover together. My husband and eldest daughter have taken up the guitar with a passion. My other two kids are exceptional Guitar Heroes. And me? I used to play the drums. Really. And using our last name, Case, as part of the title, enabled a fun play on words.

As it turns out, last year was a difficult year for me. In July my big brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer, for those of you who don't know, is one of the least curable of all cancers with barely a 5% survival rate. Sadly my brother passed away in November of last year.

The year before that, in 2010, my husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer. We got through that tough year and thank goodness my husband is a lucky survivor.

I found that these past two years my emotions were best reflected in music. So what better way to capture that than our own record album cover and self described song titles. These all have meaning for my family. I have to say I love our family photo. I truly believe that the family that 'plays' together stays together. And that's what it's all about. By the way, that's not a typo in my title on the back cover. 'Mama' + 'Manager' = 'Mamager."

Tina Case is a proud Yahoo! Shine Parenting Guru. She's also a contributor for the Yahoo! Get-it-Guide Guru program. You can follow Tina on her own blog, Parent Grapevine where she writes about the sweet and sour side of parenting, and on Yahoo! Voices.