Family Home Evening-Reverence is Love

Reverence is Love

(It's True)

With our Summer Bucket List well under way, (no seriously we are knocking things off left and right...update on that coming soon!) this week we turned our F.H.E. attention back to the gospel.

As I have mentioned before, we often try and tailor our F.H.E. lessons toward principles we feel our kids, family or home are in need of, or could benefit from at this moment. It's sometimes apparent to us what that lesson might be and some times we have to ask for a little inspiration to guide us toward the right lesson.

This week was one that let's say manifested itself to me a few times over the last few weeks. It appears that our kids are in desperate need to be reminded of the basic principle of Reverence. They're still pretty young, (6,4,3 and 10 months), so we try to go over basic principles such as this every now and again to refresh their memories.

Of course for this lesson I went straight to my favorite F.H.E. site for a little guidance. Have I mentioned how much I adore A Year of F.H.E.? In case you missed it, I love love love this site! It has everything and anything you are looking for, it's easy to use and follow, and it's FREE! Who doesn't like Free?? If you check it out and love it as much as I do, please consider making a donation. (It not only let's them feel the love, but also helps to keep the site Free).

So I went to my trusty F.H.E. site and back in the lessons for 2010 I found exactly the lesson I was looking for. Check it out here. It came complete as all their lessons do, with the lesson, song choice, activities and printables. It is seriously a one stop shop there, so easy!

I printed up all my goodies, pulled out my laminator and we were set and ready to go for a fantastic F.H.E.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy, and the whole process from start to finish took me probably under half an hour! Can't beat that...I dare you to try!

Oh I almost forgot click here to see our Family Home Evening Treat, Vanilla Mousse Cheesecake
because you can't have F.H.E. without a treat! ( seriously you can't it's in the rules).

Family Home Evening-Summer Bucket List

Summer Bucket List

(Woot Woot)

Okay so it is officially Summer, (can I get a Woot Woot!?)and even though the boy doesn't get out of school until the 1st of July (that's year round school for ya...L.A.M.E.), we are starting our Summer Celebrations tomorrow!!!

And so the hubs and I decided that for our Family Home Evening this week we would kick off our Summer Fun by making a plan so that we could be the Clan with a Plan, (Dorky I know but admit that it made you chuckle a little...)

I saw this

amaze-balls Summer Fun chart here (F.Y.I. these girls are amazing!!) and long story short I had to have one of my very own...

With slight modifications of course.
(Vintage G... I like to get inspiration and then tweak ideas to make them a littler more my own.)

I HAD to have the journal to go along with it though...

it's just way to cute an idea!

Monday night for F.H.E. the kids, the hubs and I sat down and created our Summer Bucket List of 50 fun activities and adventures to embark on this Summer! The kids had a blast naming off every fun thing they could think of and every yummy treat from here to Texas!

Needless to say that our Summer Bucket List sure got me super excited to start checking off our Summer adventures, and you can only imagine how excited my little tykes are! They're pumped to say the least!!

Our plan is to come as close as we can to checking off each activity as we can...we're shooting for 100% but we'll have to see how things shake out. Our mission is to photo journal each activity we do and add it to our journal.

Every now and then I'll try and share our progress and a few of our pics just for kicks. I'm listing in the freebies our list of 50 Summer Adventures just in case you want some inspiration for your Summer or you want to join in on the fun.

Also if you click here you will actually be able to get the printables and instructions from The Crafting Chicks to make a Summer Fun chart of your very own!
(I'm hoping that that sentence was met with Oprah giveaway type acclaim...)

Here also is a link to our FHE Sweet Treat for the week: Creamy Lemon Squares they are mmm...mmm...good!



Remember: A silly family is a happy family!

Family Home Evening-Intro

So I've decided to attempt to add sharing our Family Home Evening Lessons for all, to hopefully help inspire ideas for your own F.H.E. nights.

I love having Family Home Evening! In our family it is a nice way to dedicate at least one day a week as "Family Day." We figure while this isn't a big deal now since everyday is practically family day, it's a good habit for our family to have for when the kids get older and they actually want to leave...oh oh wait! Monday is Family Night! (See how that works?)

So this post is our intro post into F.H.E. (family home evening) Burt Family Style!

First, we like to mix things up sometimes we have a lesson, sometimes we just go out and do something together as a family, sometimes we just work on craft projects together. Do what works best for your family as long as you do it TOGETHER. For us this works, our kids are all little (6, 4, 3, and 9 months) and have little attention spans so hammering home a lesson every week gets a little tired for them and for us.

Second, for us it has worked well when we do have a lesson to tailor it to the needs of our family that particular week. For example, if we've had a hard week of naughtiness in our house we might have a lesson on obeying, honoring your mother and father, or maybe on doing your part to make a happy home.

Another example, my brother in law just recently left for his mission, for our kids this is a new concept and something they didn't quite understand. So for F.H.E. we had a lesson on Missionaries, what they are, what they do, and we had the kids write a letter to him at the MTC.

We often will do craft projects that coincide with Holiday's or Birthday's that might be coming up, or we'll take the kids to do something fun that maybe they've been asking to do.

And of course when in doubt pick a gospel lesson! We do throw in a gospel principles lesson I would say 2/4 F.H.E.'s at our house.

Third, the key to lessons is to keep them short and simple, keep them age appropriate, keep your kids involved, throw in an activity and always, ALWAYS end F.H.E. with a TREAT!!

Fourth, get organized and get the whole family involved. The reasoning for this is twofold, one if you get everyone involved not only are they more excited for F.H.E. it also holds more meaning for them because they were involved. Second, it takes all the pressure off of you. Don't let F.H.E. be a one woman show, and don't take on all the burden. For me I've come to learn that when the burden of F.H.E., falls solely on me it becomes more of a chore...and more of a chore that I end up not looking forward to. Having everyone hold a certain responsibility is a game changer. The best way I've found to do this is to get some kind of F.H.E. board. There are printable versions such as the one here, and there are also wooden boards you can find such as the ones here or chalk board ones like this. Or make your own. However you do it, DO IT!

Finally, here are a list of great resources that I frequently quite regularly to help me find inspiration for my lessons:

1. A Year of F.H.E. (they are on my list of favorite blogs, she is awesome, lessons are free, and if you want you can follow her lesson plan for the entire year!)

2. LDS.org

3. Scriptures 4 Kids

Maybe in my next post I'll show you my giant Family Home Evening Binder...it's a whopper!

Good luck with your own F.H.E. adventures and please feel free to share any great resources or tips/tricks that you use to make your Family Home Evenings go off without a hitch!

We're Going Digital-Family Rules

Okay Folks WE ARE GOING DIGITAL...Finally!
Don't be alarmed....I just mean that this post is digitally related!

Check out my latest Digital Project!

Are all of you engulfed in the Digital Scrapbooking craze?

I have to admit that I'm a little bit of a latecomer to this phase...I'm a traditional scrapbooker at heart and I have to confess that I was intimidated by the digital aspect of it all.
I am not by any means a computer whiz and I also like to be able to touch and smell what I'm working on (is that weird? It's the smell part that was weird huh?) So "going digital" was a little hard for me to wrap my head around.
I did finally give in though when I came across some pretty cool projects that I wanted to make my own so I talked the hubby into buying me the software (I can be very persuasive and the hubby is a major pushover!)

It took a little getting used to and a few tutorials to figure out what I was doing, but I LOVE it! I haven't done any real major scrapbooking as of yet, but I've used my digi scrap software a ton to create many different projects around our house! It is fantastic!

My latest project the Family Rules is just one of those projects that can be found in our house.

It seemed to be the case as of late that the "rules" had been forgotten and chaos was ruling all!

The hubs and I finally had enough.

We often like to gear our Family Home Evenings at the beginning of the month toward a value or lesson we feel our home needs. Often those revolve around issues we feel the kids need to learn or be reminded of. In this case we decided to gear it toward Family which encompassed respect, the family unit and each members role to making a happy home...honoring their Mother and Father and all that good stuff.

As part of the lesson we went over Our Family Rules and what each one meant, as well as the consequences and rewards that went with them. To make it easy I made a Family Rules visual aid, had it printed and laminated and displayed where the kids can see it and I can remind them often what those rules and expectations are.
It's actually been quite helpful for me to point to the rules (which is conveniently located next to their behavior chart and timeout spot) and remind them of those rules when they get a little too mischievous.
They actually like to remind each other of those rules quite often. Usually one likes to remind the other as they are breaking a rule, and usually that reminding comes loud and when mommy is in earshot....(Kids will be kids I guess).

Any who, I like to share so I thought I would!
You should, if I haven't totally messed this up, (which would be surprising) be able to click on the Family Rules Picture, download, print and laminate your own copy!

These are Rules that pertained to our house, but yours may be different, so it may not work for your home (If I could I would customize each of you one of your very own...but that might be crazy). Number 5 is my favorite one (of course) and number 9 I wish didn't have to be a rule but seems to be an issue in our house sometimes (besides potty training issues, my boys seem to think that outside is nature's bathroom). But if it does work for you download away baby!!