I have a confession to make...I didn't always enjoy FHE growing up. In know, shocking. I'm sure half the world felt the same. My parents were usually very serious about FHE. We always had it. We always learned. To this day I have strong feelings about having Family Home Evening. I really feel it is important. I commend my parents for being so diligent in making us have it. The only thing I wish we did more of was have fun! That isn't to say we didn't have fun but my memories of Family Home Evening are mostly of sitting in the living room with our scriptures open reading from them and then discussing them. I can trace my knowledge of the scriptures back to those nights but I have to admit, it was not fun.
So, Mike and I have talked extensively about this. We have little kids that can't sit very long for Family Home Evening. We ALWAYS have it. We decided that we need to learn something and we need to have fun! I think we will have those gospel discussion sometimes as our kids get older but definitely not every Monday night. We decided that whatever we do has to be tied back to the gospel.
Last night we had to go grocery shopping. We packed the kids up and got our grocery shopping done and then when we got home we sat around the table and looked at pictures of food and animals, grains, cigarettes, wine, beer, etc. We read from Doctrine and Covenants 89 about the Word of Wisdom and talked about what things are OK to eat and which are not. Then we ate ice cream. That is sure to be good for our bodies right? This morning while eating breakfast the boys continued to look at the pictures and talk about them.
Not a very involved FHE but short and sweet and we got to get our groceries done.
2 comments:
I love to think about what I need to get done anyway and apply it to a gospel principle--I think it's smart parenting :). For instance, one Monday we needed to weed the backyard, so while we did it I rambled about how weeding is like repentance. The kids stopped weeding after 5 seconds and started to catch bugs. Another time I had been wanting to write some thank you cards to some neighbors so we had an FHE on being thankful (and used the 10 lepers picture and story) and I killed two birds with that stone too--got the kids to write/draw the thank you cards for me!
Those are great ideas! We have done something similar with the letters. We made cards and talked about being thankful and then took the cards to our neighbors. I love the one with the repentance and weeding. We have used our garden for things but not repentance. I like that.
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