FHE

I wrote this last week, but we had soooo much going on last week, with Halloween and everything, I decided to wait...
Bill made it home from his trip, everyone is still alive and kicking... and life goes on. So here are my thoughts from last week. 28 Oct. 08

Family Home Evenings

I know we have been instructed to have regular family home evening, over the years we have tried and sometimes we’ve been successful and other times... not so much.

A dear friend recently told us a funny quote: Family Home Evening, the family fight that begins and ends with a prayer.
Thanks D! ;-)

I made my cute little Family Home Evening Chart, and with that came the fights about who wanted to do what part, and who did what last time, if the pieces had gotten played with and moved around... We usually have several who want to do songs and want to pick songs and lead songs, several of them think that they HAVE to have a Hymn book or Children’s Song book of their own, though we do own 3 or 4 of each, we don’t happen to own enough for every single family member... so there are more fights over that. There are fights over who wants to do the lesson... who is planning or what to have for snack... When we begin to have the lesson, someone or more than one person inevitably think it is time for gymnastics or a nap or something or other. I often wonder how they ever manage to sit through school classes and primary, etc. Surely they don’t act this way for their teachers! (Or at least I HOPE they don’t!)

I sort of feel like we need to stick with/or get back to the Basics – the correct way to say prayers, how to behave at Church, what fasting should be about, instead of just whining about that they are STARVING... o.k., so if I am in charge I tend to get Preachy... and that doesn’t usually go over very well.

Another friend of mine told me that in their family FHE was difficult as well. Then it seemed to work better after they turned it over to the Patriarch of their family. Dad now does FHE, and it works out for them. It took some time for him to get into his ‘groove’ but now he teaches AWESOME lessons! (We have benefitted from some of those awesome lessons over the years.)

When we were in the 11:00 time slot for Church, we did a Sunday afternoon family time. We would come home from Church, put a bunch of foods in the oven to cook- tater skins, mozzarella cheese sticks, bagel bites, mini corn dogs, taquitos, and then we would have a ‘picnic’ dinner sitting on a blanket in the living room and we’d watch a show or movie all together as a family. We would say prayer to start as we blessed the food and our family, and we didn’t have the fights. We would sometimes watch Church oriented movies or just family shows. We went through a whole series of a show, during that time.

Years ago, a friend in one of our wards told a story about their family while she taught her R.S. lesson. In their family, it was SNACKs of all things!!! They could never get past the need to have a refreshment at the end of the lesson! Their 4 children were all extremely picky and they could never make everyone happy, so it became more of a hassle than anything else, so they ended up not having FHE until they came to the conclusion that even though it generally started with a song, prayer and then lesson and ended with a song another prayer and then snack, they didn’t HAVE to have snack! When they gave up on that part of it, they began to have much more successful FHE’s.

I suppose the lesson in all of this, is that there is not one absolute ‘right’ way to have FHE. What works for one family might be different from what works for another family. And what works while your children are one age might also be different as they grow. I guess the point is to try, to have the desire, and do something, and we will be blessed.

I have to say that I so enjoyed the Stake Conference sessions with Elder Mask. I LOVED hearing his stories, and his testimony, and it strengthened my own. I loved that he made it so personal, and as well all the personal stories of missionary work that brought our local leaders to the church from their ancestors lives. I was buoyed up and strengthened.

Then we had a little family strife, and I have to brag on my 2nd DD! I was busy running children to all the places they needed to be (we had dentist, orthodontist, eye Dr, Physical Therapy and physical therapy appointments all in two days, along with trying to go shopping to get the stuff together for Halloween costumes, etc...). with all of this and Bill being gone for the week on business, it has been crazy at my house!
I left the house Monday morning at about 8:15 am... (pulling Liam from bed, he is not so much a morning person – and after a restless night... he wasn’t so happy), I ran fresh, Hot, cooked sticky rice and Sushi, and a bunch of props to Sariah at school, for her presentation on Japan for her first hour class at the middle school. After helping set up and clean up her project, I then ran to drop off Marissa’s pumpkin project at the elementary school – they had to do a book report and then decorate a pumpkin to go along with their book report. I loved hers. She decided to do the Three Little Pigs. We used little bitty pumpkins and she painted them pink, then she drew on their eyes, we added ears, 3-d noses, and curly tails. They turned out really cute! I didn’t want her to have to take them on the bus and ruin them, so I dropped those off at school.
Then we ran off to take Liam to Physical Therapy. Liam has gone through another growth spurt, and his limp has become quite pronounced again. So we have gone back to physical therapy again. His bones measure the same length, but his one leg is still being pulled up into the hip joint area (until we get another set of x-rays, we won’t know for sure how much growth has taken place this year with the ball joint of his hip), but there is abt. a ½ in. leg length discrepancy right now. His Physical therapist is ordering a small lift for his shoe to see what we can do to help level him out a bit so he will be able to walk a bit more level, and not end up with leg, and back pain due to an uneven gait). Anyway, we spend an hour at physical therapy doing lots of running around, exercising, and stretching out of his leg and hip.
After P.T. we went visiting teaching, then I picked up the kids from school, (two different schools), and went to the dentist, and then ran to the eye Dr. to pick up a prescription, back to another glasses place to see if they still carry the glasses that Sariah loves – which they don’t, then shopping. I was so exhausted (and it was only Monday...). I called Amanda and asked if she’d make some rice, and put some meat in some teriyaki sauce, then start it cooking.
It was soooooo nice to come home to dinner just about ready to go, she was making cookie dough for delicious pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, and she had put together a FHE lesson on families. How sweet was that!?! It was just what we needed!
Thank you for pulling all of that together for me Amanda!

Anyway, after talking about family home evening earlier and thinking about it recently, to come home and have my dear daughter take on this task all on her own to help me. It really made my day!