Tuesday Tips

Last night, I was in charge of family home evening. Did you have family home evening in your families growing up? We did; sometimes it was dreaded, sometimes entertaining, sometimes fighting would occur. I even remember falling asleep during family home evening a few times when I was a teenager. John also had family home evening in his house, so it's been fairly easy to carry on the tradition/habit/etc. - but not without it's challenges, especially with small children. Our family nights are fairly simple with two kids, sing a few songs of their choice, pray, short message or activity, and that's it. I've been known to say this on a Monday night too, "We're watching, Dancing With the Stars for Family Home Evening..." My mom would not have approved, she always said, "It's family home EVENING, not family home HOUR."

Anyway, here are a few tips for your family for having family home evening with small children.

TIP #1: Make sure your two year old DOESN'T take a nap that day. It always creates a more interesting family night!

TIP #2: Let your two year old play musical chairs during family home evening. (Last night we sat at the kitchen table for FHE , she wanted in her seat, cried to get our of her seat, cried to get back in her seat, wanted to be held....)

TIP #3: Let your kids be involved by choosing the songs to sing, therefore reducing any temptations to argue about the songs you sing.... WRONG. Our kids choose songs, and then fight over who's song we sing first. Really? This early? Ugh.

TIP #4: Let your children hold cookie cutters during the lesson to help keep them occupied. Well, only do that if you want to have to wash your cookie cutters before you use them, as they end up in mouths, on noses, on heads...

TIP #5: If you didn't prepare a lesson earlier, take the pressure off of you, and ask your husband to answer some questions that really shares the main part of your lesson. (I never do that...)

TIP #6: Keep it short and sweet. At the very least for your own sanity.

So, I knew it was my turn to do family home evening, but I never got around to preparing it yesterday. I come up with our lesson during dinner (Oops, now my husband knows...). I decided to do a lesson on love. We talked a little bit about Valentine's Day coming up, and that it was a day to celebrate love, and I asked Trevan these simple questions, and the discussion went from there:

1. How do we show each other that we love each other?

2. How does Daddy show you that he loves you?

3. What can you do to show Mallary that you love her?

4. How can we show Jesus that we love Him?

and then the question for John to answer

5. How did Jesus show us that He loved us?

We then made some yummy Cherry Cheese Turnovers in the shape of hearts. You can see our finished products and recipe HERE.