FHE Week 3.

 Last night Ross taught the lesson for FHE. He gathered up the girls' piggy banks and tithing jars and some extra coins. The two oldest girls get $2.50 for allowance each week. It's not a lot, but we wanted to teach the girls about both saving and tithing. We have a giant tub for tithing that the girls toss their $0.25 into each week and the rest they get to put in their piggy banks and spend or save on whatever they'd like. A few months ago they bought their own shoes with the allowance they had saved up. I think Claire is currently saving for a Doc McStuffins Clinic truck.

Anyway, we talked about tithing last night. The girls usually get their allowance on Saturdays, but we had forgotten yesterday, so Ross had their allowance for that week out to give to them. Ross gave it to them and asked what the first thing we did was. We've been doing it for a while, so the girls knew that right away they threw one of their quarters into the tithing bucket. Claire shouted, "We tithe it!" I asked her what that meant. Right answer, but I wanted to see if she knew the WHY behind it.

Ross talked with the girls about our church building and temples and missionaries and how tithing money goes to help with that. He laid out 10 pennies and asked the girls if they had gotten 10 pennies, how many of those would go to tithing. (We pay 10% of everything we get to tithing.) He talked with the girls about how Heavenly Father gives us everything, so we give just a little bit back to Him to say thank you. He helped them fill out their tithing slips and place their tithes in the envelope. Aoife wanted to drive to Bishop's house right away instead of waiting till next Sunday.

Then we played with Legos until bed time. Aoife had made brownies, but they girls didn't finish dinner so Ross and I ate some after they went to bed. (Mean parents, I know.) I've really enjoyed doing Family Home Evening on Sunday. It's been the perfect end to the day.

FHE WEEK 2.

We've never been great at having a consistent Family Home Evening (FHE). It's where we have a small gospel lesson, a treat, and an activity together. It's just a night for us to be together as a family. Our schedule is insane. I work most evenings and our time together as a family is limited. It took a while for us to find a night that worked for us. We decided on Sunday nights.

Ross taught our first FHE and I want to say it was on Family Home Evenings and why we have it and introducing the idea to the girls. We took out our Family Home Evening board and set it up, ate popsicles together, and played a matching/puzzle game.

Week 2 I was teaching the lesson. At church we've been talking about Making the Sabbath day more Holy. Our leaders have suggested making a Family and Personal Sabbath Day Plan and I decided we were going to follow counsel and do it!

Sundays at our house are a circus. Church is at 11 and my children are early risers. One naps in the morning and all 3 nap in the afternoon. I'm convinced there isn't a perfect church time. At 11, my kids are hungry and tired and cranky. We usually roll up to church with at least one kid screaming. Sacrament meeting, the most important meeting, is a blur as we try to wrangle the littles into their seats, and the drive home also has at least one kid screaming. Often I'm left why we bother to go when we're clearly a circus and I have eyes staring at me like "Why can't you control your kid?". We needed a lesson on reverence and a plan on how to make our Sabbath day what we want it to be.

I started by asking the girls what day it was. (We're pretty big on days of the week at our house.) It was Sunday and so I asked what we do on Sundays. -go to church. Then I talked about how Sunday is also called the Sabbath Day and how when we go to church we act a little differently.

Earlier I had cut out body parts from construction paper. (A head, a triangle for a dress, eyes, nose, ears, mouth, arms, and legs) I had a glue stick so we could put together our person as we talked about what each of our different body parts should do at church. We're pretty big on anything that involves scissors or glue.

We started with the head and I asked what our heads should do. (Bow our heads during prayers, think about Jesus)
Then our clothes and what our clothes should look like at church (Clean and neat)
Eyes (Watching the speakers was what my little came up with, which I liked, but I was leaning towards closed during prayers.)
Nose (Not picking our nose at church. We've had a couple offenses)
Ears (Listening to the speakers and teachers)
Mouth (My little said Smiling. But also talking quietly)
Arms (Little's response "Keep them to yourselves!" But also folded during prayers)
Legs (Walking quietly in the hallways, not running)

We glued our reverence person together and put it on the fridge so next Sunday we can look at it and remind us how to be reverent at church.

Then we grabbed a plate of Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies that Claire made (Seriously, click the link and make these. A family favorite and so stupid easy.) and headed to the table to make our Sabbath Day plan. Earlier I had written out ideas, which I'm glad I did. I ended up listing off what I thought would help us have a great Sabbath, and talking about it with Ross while the girls munched and listened.

Then we played with homemade play doh that Aoife had made for us earlier. We'll have to see how next Sunday goes, but hopefully our plan will help and our reverence person can remind us how to be reverent at church!