Make the dinner table a place for sharing. One couple I spoke with designates meals as a time to swap news and events of the day. The children take turns talking about each period of school and what happened afterward. The parents listen, ask questions and keep the conversation moving, but the floor belongs to the kids. They always ask what we do at school, so we tell them.
Many families make travel a pleasure by playing games to pass the time.
But as the kids got older and more sophisticated, so did the game. Tell special bedtime stories. Evenings are a time when kids are more ready to let down their guard, so put some extra effort into making them comfortable. I know one family ritual in which the children invent the first line of a bedtime story about a cow, a pig and a chicken, and their mother has to finish the tale. The kids all look forward to figuring out ways to stump Mom and seeing how outlandish the story becomes.