Thursday, February 24, 2011

Spiritual Resolutions for the Whole Family

This year, we decided to kick our bums into gear and make some family goals. Spiritual resolutions if you will. We decided on the following schedule to help us reach our goals:

Sunday: Family Council (where we discuss up coming events and schedules, complaints and suggestions and basic planning. We also address concerns and talk about other extended family members that may need service or our prayers that week. We also read scriptures to make up for any days that we missed during the week.)

Monday: FHE (sometimes a lesson, occasionally a fun activity. Like this last week. We went down to my mom's in Alpine, and had her show my boys how to grind wheat from food storage and make wheat bread. They helped their grandma measure and mix. The boys each formed their own loaf and put it in the pan. Then we ate the yummy bread right out of the oven with lots of butter and honey! I don't think my boys knew, that wheat, is where we get flour from.)

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday: Family Scripture Reading (On these nights, we all meet in the family room at 7:30p.m. sharp for scriptures. We're reading the Book of Mormon. We have an opening prayer, read 4 pages, and close with family prayer. Short and sweet. We felt that 4 pages was a manageable goal for the boys' attention spans. Its worked out pretty good. The important thing is, we're reading!!)

Friday and Saturday are free. We do try to do a family activity together one of the nights-dinner out or take-out and a movie in. Or some other fun activity. Todd and I have date night the other night together, sans kiddos.

For Todd and me, this was huge. We have attempted to do all of these things but have been unsucessful with being able to follow through for a very long time. Or we'd choose one thing to work on like FHE, do it for awhile and give up when the kids gave us grief or when we weren't prepared. I think the trick to making this work for us, was to set manageable and attainable goals in each of these areas. We also have been pretty commited to making it work. And the blessings we've seen and felt...incredible.

This post isn't about tooting our horn. It's about sharing our victory-over the adversary. He is so ever present in all of our lives. Doing these things, help us as a family, to remember we are sons and daughters of a loving Heavenly Father who wishes our return to him. All we have to do, is do our part.