What a beautiful fall day it was today. My son and daughter went to sacrament with me today and stayed in my dark room with me. I told them they could go to the chapel together and I could go alone to my dark room, but they both insisted on coming with me.
We then went home and rested up and prepared for our family dinner and family night.
It was a blast tonight as we all had dinner together and had Family Home Evening. Andrew, my son-in-law gave a great 2 minute lesson. I know it might sound short to have a 2 minute lesson, but we have a child, who until recently, would not stick around for FHE on Sunday's after dinner.
One week when this particular child had left when it was time to have FHE, I asked my family their ideas on what we could do to keep this child around and to help them feel loved. As we talked about this we thought back to a FHE lesson I did on family memories. It was a game that everyone really loved!
I had made a game on a white board by sticking white pieces of paper worth points similar to Jeopardy. Behind each point value there was a memory in which they had to act it out or draw it. We had four categories to choose from: Childhood memories, vacations, funny events, and misc. It was such a fun game and everyone laughed and talked about these memories for over an hour.
So since this was so successful, and this child really seemed to enjoy this activity we decided to put our focus more on the activity of the night and create a 2 minute lesson. We also decided that the lesson had to be a powerful summary of a conference talk, scripture story, or from a church magazine which would not take away from the spiritual learning process.
We have done the regular prayer, scripture, thought, song, and the 2 min. lesson and long activity for the past two weeks now. We have found this child has chosen to be there and participate in all the fun! As a mother my heart could not have found any greater joy then to see my entire family all together again!
It was my turn to choose the activity tonight and so I chose to play the card game "Spoons". Make sure you have 4 of a kind for every person playing, shuffle and deal 4 card to each player. The person to the left of the dealer calls. EXAMPLE: 2 cards to the right, 3 card to the left. Everyone continues passing cards around the table until someone gets 4 of a kind. Once someone gets 4 of a kind they grab a spoon from the middle of the table, then everyone else tries to grab one. The person who is left without a spoon is out. (make sure you have one less spoon then people playing in the middle of the table). Game continues until one person is left holding the last spoon.
Last night we decided that whoever got out would get to decorate a pumpkin cookie and eat it while watching everyone else play the game... Guess who was out first??? YEP you guessed it...ME! But no worried I got the best of both worlds. I got to decorate a cookie with my grand-babies and was able to hold them and video the crazy game as my kids are pretty competitive!!
Here is a video of my two sons, J'Dee and C'Jay with Shaniah, my daughter, all fighting for the last two spoons.
I guess you could say... Shaniah did not want to be out of the game quite yet!!! HAHAH!
