A fun Christmas FHE

Last night we had a fun Family Home Evening; don't you love when they're a success? For the lesson portion we watched the Church's new Bible videos online, showing the events surrounding the birth of Christ. You can find them here. They are very well made and so touching; I don't know why I can't listen to somebody reading Luke 2:11 without tearing up every time. All six of the videos depicting parts of the Christmas story are about 20 minutes in total; a great length for family night.

For our activity and treat we cut tortillas into snowflakes! I got the idea here. Just fold in half and then in thirds, and cut with scissors just like a paper snowflake. Instead of sprinkling them with sugar sprinkles as shown on Our Best Bites, we did cinnamon & sugar. They turned out great and the kids thought it was fun. Here are the three that didn't break, after they were cooked: The girls all wanted "eating shots" of themselves.

What sillies.

Noah's started to fall apart when he was cutting it but that was okay, it was just more like sweet chips as he was eating it.

So there's an idea for you for next Monday if you want!

Family Unity FHE

Earlier this week for Family Home Evening, I taught the same lesson I had taught the day before in Young Women at church. It's a great message for all ages: Encouraging Family Unity. We talked about some ideas to encourage harmony in our home and strengthen our family bonds. The kids came up with some awesome/hilarious ideas and I just had to share... the heading on their paper says "I can help to make my family unified and strong. This week, I will..."

Noah: (If I have time) do a secret service to somebody, give at least 200 compliments (to keep track, I will have a little notebook to tally on in my pocket), and eat my dinner even if it's potato salad with squash-zucchini and 100 fly legs on the side.

Molly: Draw spheres and give them to my family members. [she's really into drawing spheres lately] I'll be nice and have a good attitude. I will help with everything I need to even if it's something terrible.

Zoe: [I can't find Zoe's little paper... will update when I do!]

Lucy: Clean up whenever my Mom and Dad said. I promise for my whole entire life. And, love them forever even myself. I will do whatever they say forever for my whole entire life so I can be happy forever. And... KEEP THE COMMANDMENTS.

(Lucy got a little dramatic.)

My family unity goal for the week is to not raise my voice (in anger/frustration), and so far I'm doing pretty well. Actually writing that goal down, and also seeing the kids' cute goal papers on the fridge, has helped me remember during a couple of moments when I would "normally" raise my voice, to keep calm.

Oh, and the little strings on the papers are a reminder of the object lesson from the beginning; we each tried to break a piece of embroidery floss and couldn't. But when the individual strands are separated, each one is easily broken. So, as our family is more unified and all members are working together, we are strong.

More St. Pat's fun

Tuesday evening ended up being more green and festive than originally planned. I had decided on "noodles and peas" for dinner (what my kids call fetuccine alfredo with peas - it's a favorite around here) but I thought I'd see what would happen if I put some green food coloring into the pasta water. I was pleased with the result and so was everyone else!

(Tastes better than it looks)

Lately we've been having Family Home Evening on Tuesday nights. I came up with this little lesson: we talked about "treasures" because of the Leprechauns' pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and on the back of each shamrock was an example of a "treasure on earth" (like the Wii) or a "treasure in heaven" (like testimonies). The kids had to decide which was which; pretty easy for them to figure out. Don't look too close beause I made a major typo in the scripture there; embarrassing. It went pretty well; of course anything with visual aids usually works pretty well. Maybe having gold coins (yellow cardstock) to represent the "treasures" would've made more sense, but I wanted shamrocks. We are pretty good about having some kind of semi-organized FHE, nearly every week, but it's not often that Hubs or I plan it ahead. I need to remember that it's really not that much trouble to plan something cute and it makes it so much better; I need to do this sort of thing more often. (Especially when I have been sent a handy-dandy "FHE all year" email attachment... have you received that? If not let me know and I'll forward it to you! Great ideas!)

For our nice green FHE treat we ate these Sugar Cookie Bars, they are so easy to make and one of my favorite discoveries from Real Mom Kitchen. I was going to make regular, rolled-out sugar cookies because I have a shamrock cookie cutter but I couldn't find it! So instead I made these with green frosting and nobody minded that these were cut into squares and not shamrock shapes. Oh, and since I was out of green sprinkles, I put a couple tablespoons of sugar in a baggie with a few drops of green food coloring and mushed it around... worked out great as a green sprinkles substitute.

It was a fun day.

Another successful FHE

If you click on it you can see better all the great stuff the kids are thankful for!

Young Americans

The kids made these flags for our FHE activity on Monday night, in honor of Veterans Day. For our opening song we sang the Star-Spangled Banner, I told them the story of the night that song was written by Francis Scott Key, and we talked about appreciation for Veterans and what that means. While they worked on their flags, we listened to a recording of Battle Hymn of the Republic. This was a follow-up to our lengthy breakfast discussion about the Revolutionary War and World War II, in which I got into way too many details about the differences between the Pacific and European Theaters... and also it was a follow-up from our FHE last week, when we talked about "What can we do to help our country and community?"

I am sick and tired of the apathetic attitude that prevails in society with regard to the USA, and I for one plan to do all I can to raise children who love their country.

On Monday night, the kids were all so anxious to hang their flags on their bedroom doors, and I overheard them saying to each other, "This flag means that my room is for Americans!" And later, they came up with secret passwords to enter their own rooms: Molly's secret password was the Pledge of Allegiance, and Noah's was singing the Star-Spangled Banner. I couldn't be more proud!