Our Family Dance Parties (& Why Music Is Important To Us)

This post is in partnership with Sonos and CJ Affiliate's VIP Content Service. All opinions are my own.

As those of you who read here regularly or follow me on social media know, music is way of life for my family. My husband works in the music industry as the Stage Manager for a touring band, he and I met at a concert, and we've collectively attended many hundreds of shows and festivals for fun over the years. My former career as a clothing designer also involved vending and producing fashion shows at major music festivals throughout the country, for well over a decade.

It's probably no surprise that both of our little ones love music as much as we do (and have been going to listen to live music since the womb!). This makes me happy not just because all of us have a common affinity for music, but also because there are legitimate studies that show incredible benefits that music (and dance!) provide for growing brains. In fact, everything from overall cognitive development to memory to ability to learn new information can be improved by enjoying music.

Needless to say, there is always music playing at our house, and spontaneous family dance parties are a regular part of our daily lives. Essley will literally call out the words "dance party!" if she senses any sort of stress from us (man do I love that kid's sensitive heart). At that point we all stop what we're doing, and one of us (again, usually Essley) says to our Sonos One smart speaker, "Alexa, play _______." (Admittedly this is most often a song from Frozen or Trolls, but hey, we'll take it.) Just like that the room is filled with music - that has a surprisingly exuberant, layered sound quality - from the tiny black speaker (that this design-obsessed lady also happens to find very attractive) sitting on an end table (or wherever we happen to have it on that particular day). Instantly, we are connected as a family, our moods are improved, and we're all doing something we genuinely love. When Robbie is on the road and it's just the kids and me, the dance parties continue. They're a simple way for me to take breaks from work or home/kid stuff and hit the reset button, along with my little ones.

The new Sonos One smart speaker has legitimately been a game changer for this family of music lovers. First of all, it has Amazon Alexa built in, which allows us to do everything from request specific songs (or entire albums) to stream music to access our personal music libraries and more. If the music is too quiet, we just say "Alexa, turn it up!" If we don't recognize a song, we ask Alexa what's playing. If we want to a skip a song, we just tell her to skip it. Sonos One syncs voice, app, and touch commands, which makes it so we can manage our music just by saying a word, or tapping the app, or swiping the speaker - we choose how we want to control it. (We can also use our Sonos One Alexa to check the news or traffic, manage our smart phones, and a do a whole lot more, but that's a whole different post.) And it connects wirelessly to other Sonos speakers in other rooms, so you can have music playing throughout your entire home. It's amazing you guys. And it makes it so our family dance party sessions can be truly spontaneous, because there aren't any interruptions. We don't need to stop what we're doing and put on an album or go get a phone, find a song, plug it into a speaker and wait. In just a few seconds, we are dancing. Together.

And just because it's so adorable, here is a photo of the kids having a dance party, in the exact same spot, almost a year ago. It blows my mind how tiny they look! It also warms my heart to look through old pictures and be reminded of the fact that music has always been (and will hopefully always be) such an integral part of their lives.

Fellow music lovers, who else has family dance parties? And do any of you have the Sonos One yet? (If not, I highly recommend it! We love ours so much that I'm giving a couple for holiday gifts as well. Woohoo!)