Project Bewitch - Rule #2

Alright, another strategy that I have found helpful during those last few anxious hours of the day comes in play about a half hour before Daddy comes home . . .

MUSIC!

Depending on the day and the mood I pick something different. If I feel like jamming with the girls then we get something more upbeat going, if I am feeling frantic and stressed then something more soothing and relaxing does the trick.

Music isn't ALWAYS helpful. Sometimes it just adds to the noise and chaos, but I do find that there are days that it helps.

So there you go! Another little helpful tip that I have found useful for those crazy moments (that can feel like weeks) before daddy walks through the door.

FHE - Prayer

I am going to try and get back in the habit of posting what we are doing for some of our Family Home Evenings. (I don't know that I really deserve to say "get back in the habit" due to the fact that I have only posted two or three of our lessons . . . )

I kind of envision being able to create a blogbook of sorts that includes all of the family home evening lessons that I create. I think this would be something great to pass on to my kids. It can be time consuming to gather all the materials and to study different sources to create a whole lesson. 99% of what I put together is a combination of other people's ideas, but it would be nice to still have it all back in one spot. (And lets be honest, I also want to cheat and recycle lessons that the kids are a fan of . . . repetition is a kids best friend AND a busy moms delight.)

I will begin each lesson with "The Inspiration". This is just the inspiration behind the lesson for that week. (There isn't always an inspiration, I tend to usually fly by the seat of my pants, but I find that if I AM actually being vigilant that there is usually something that happens in the week that can easily be turned into a family home evening.)

So here it is . . .

INSPIRATION:

This week's lesson is on praying. Kenzie has gotten a little bit wiggly lately during almost all prayer times - which is to be expected of a three-year-old; but Garrett and I still thought that it might be helpful to talk about some of the reasons why we are reverent during prayers and practice the right way to pray. We really want her to come to understand that prayer is a wonderful gift from our Heavenly Father that she can treasure and use at any moment in her life.

SPIRITUAL PREPARATION:

• The following preparation suggestion was taken from the church nursery manual Behold Your Little Ones: Through prayer we can talk with our Heavenly Father. We tell Him we love Him, we thank Him for blessings, and we ask for help for ourselves and for others in need. We end our prayers in the name of Jesus Christ. Prayer is one of the greatest blessings we have while we are here on earth. (See Matthew 6:9–13; Alma 34:18–27; 3 Nephi 18:19–21.)
• I also read a talk from President Henry B Eyring that is FULL of inspiration on the reasons why prayer is so vital for the protection and guidance that I want so badly for our children. The talk is entitled "That He May Write Upon Our Hearts". Click HERE for the link.

PHYSICAL PREPARATION:

• Flip chart for opening song (look under opening song for more specific directions)
• A picture of Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount such as picture number 212 in the Gospel Art Picture Kit. Click HERE for a link to this picture. (see item number one of the lesson to see how this will be used) - I liked a suggestion from page 15 of this months Ensign that is talking about sharing the scriptures with your children. It was suggested by one mother to print a copy of the picture for each family member to se and handle to help encourage excitement about what you are talking about.
• (optional) A notebook and stickers that your child has picked out (see item number four in the lesson for more information)
• Paper and crayons/colored pencils for each family member (see item number five in the lesson)
• The girls and I are going to make the brownies to take to neighbors earlier in the day so that we can be ready to deliver them right after the lesson, but you could make them as a family too if you want! It is just close to bedtime around here and I didn't want to add the extra thirty to forty minutes of brownie making time to the FHE when the kids will be getting close to the extremely grumpy hour.

OPENING SONG: I Pray in Faith, Children's Songbook pg. 14 Click HERE for a copy/link.

• visual for the song: Page 19 of the nursery manual Behold Your Little One's had a little flip chart that you can create and use as a fun visual/interaction for the second verse of the song. Click HERE for a link to the lesson. Simply click on the chart under preparation (NOT THE ONE UNDER FLIP CHART) and a window will come up to print it out right there.

SCRIPTURE: We are currently working on memorizing James 1:5 as a family. If any of you are interested in the word document that I put together for a visual for this scripture I would be happy to email it to you. Just leave me a comment and I can pass it along. I have no idea if it is possible to post documents to a blog?

LESSON:

1. JESUS TAUGHT: Roll play and discussion with the Sermon on the Mount.

Hold up a picture of Jesus teaching the Sermon on the Mount and ask:

"Who is this?"

Talk about how this is Jesus and all of his disciples.

"Do you know what a disciple is?"

(Answer: a personal follower of Jesus.)

Briefly teach about the Sermon on the Mount in a dialogue/discussion similar to the following: (See Matt 6:5-15 for the Savior's teaching on prayer)

"This picture shows Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount to all his disciples. They gathered on a mountainside and He taught them lots and lots of things about how to be happy and follow Him. Do you see the mountains? Where are the mountains?

One of the things that Jesus taught His disciples on the mountainside was how to pray. He taught them them to pray in secret and not to pray for everyone to see. Can we pretend to pray secretly without anyone else seeing?" (Have the whole family to pretend to go into their bedroom or a closet to pray all by themselves and while you are pretending explain to everyone that when we pray we get to say very special things to Heavenly Father that are only between us and Heavenly Father.)

After you have pretended to pray in secret you could talk about how some prayers we say all together as a family or all together as a church, but we don't do this to brag about how good we are and for the whole world to, but to be better at worshipping our Father in Heaven.

Show the picture of the Sermon on the Mount again and continue

"Jesus also taught during the Sermon on the Mount that we start our prayer by recognizing our Father in Heaven by name. Then we can pray for things like help to be forgiving, help to get the things that we need to be comfortable, and help to not be tempted by Satan. What are some other things that we can pray about?"

2. SING A SONG

Sing the opening song with the flip chart and repeat it a few times allowing everyone a turn to flip the chart open during the appropriate times.

3. QUESTION AND ANSWER

Ask some or all of the following questions and talk a little bit about each one.

So what do we do with our bodies when we pray?

Can you show me what it looks like when we pray?

Why do we sit reverently when we pray?

4. APPLICATION: Reverence Bag

Garrett and I were talking about ways to make sacrament meeting a little bit less wiggly and I thought it might be fun to try a reverence bag of sorts. I have set aside some toys and books that are a little bit more quite (i.e. the magna-doodle things, small flannel board, sticker books, small dry erase boards, the sewing string boards, colored pencils, gospel board books, old friend magazines, and toys that don't make noise for Jorydn.) On Saturday night we are going to try to get in the habit of packing our reverence bag by picking some of these items from a box that I have set aside and putting them in her bag. As part of this we will start a little scripture journal for her. I am going to take her to the store tomorrow to pick out a journal or binder of the cheap sort that we will call her scripture journal and I will also let her pick out some special stickers. On the inside flap of the journal I will make a chart that she can place a sticker on every time that she sits ALL the way through a prayer during sacrament meeting or family prayers. We will present this book and chart to her during family home evening. We will tell her that the journal is something that she can have during scripture study and during church to draw pictures or write words about what she thinks or feels or hears. We're hoping that this will add a little fun reminder to pray without wiggling all over the place . :)

5. DRAW A PICTURE FOR THE SCRIPTURE WALL

Pages 12-15 of this months Ensign has some great stuff on teaching our children from the scriptures. One of the ideas for young children is to have a scripture wall where you display pictures that have been drawn by your children with statements underneath about what their picture is showing. I think I am going to try this starting tonight. I will get back out the picture of the Savior at the Sermon on the Mount and we can all draw a picture of what we see and talk about what we are drawing while we go along. Then I will glue Kenzie's to some card stock or construction paper and we can start our own scripture wall in her toy room. We will write a little statement at the bottom summarizing what the picture shows and try to refer back to these pictures throughout the weeks to come.

ACTIVITY:

We are going to take brownies over to some of our new neighbors in our cul-de-sac to more officially introduce ourselves to them.

TREAT:

We are going to save a plate of those brownies for our own treat! :)

Kenzism - In Her Belly

While at church on Sunday Kenzie and I had the following conversation:

KENZIE: Mom, where is the baby? (She was referring to the fact that there were a circle of men in sacrament meeting on the stage, but no baby . . . she is used to seeing a baby blessing with a circle of men, but this was one of her first experiences seeing someone being confirmed.)

ME: Oh, there is no baby this time, see that lady up there? She is getting the holy ghost.

KENZIE: (with an EXTREMELY confused look on her face) Where do they put the holy ghost?

ME: The Holy Ghost is a gift that you get so that you can feel him inside of you helping you choose the right.

KENZIE: Oh, they put him in your belly.

Looks like I have a good idea of what FHE will entail the next few weeks!

Project Bewitch - Rule #1

For those of you who are unaware of Project Bewitch, you will just have to click on the label to update yourself a bit - then you'll be a little bit less confused about what I have to say here.

I really have been putting a lot of thought into how to make those last few hours of the day more pleasant in my house. It's really important to me that we enjoy those few hours that we have together as a family each day, and for Garrett to come home to a happy home as often as possible. Things can just escalate to madness and chaos too quickly and I am determined to have some fun and enjoy each other as much as possible.

So, my first rule of Project Bewitch is:

Four-O-Clock Is Quitting Time!

Let me explain.

I tend to get super stressed out at the end of the day because I am thinking of the things that haven't gotten done, I am thinking of dinner that needs to be made, I am looking at the house that I would like to be more tidy before Garrett walks in, and I can quickly get myself worked up into a frenzy.

Or better yet, I am dead in the middle of a project and I just keep going and going with it and before I realize it Garrett is walking through the door, the girls are ready to eat, and I'm actually hungry myself, which puts us into the hungry grumpy family zone, and things can quickly go down hill from there.

So from now on at four-o-clock my ONLY priorities are

to get dinner on the table,

to do a quick tidy-up,

and to enjoy my family until my girls are snuggled away in their little beds.

If I'm on the computer working on something - I am DONE at four-o-clock, if I am decorating a part of the house and consumed by a project and four-o-clock hits . . . it's quitting time. It's time to change gears.

I know this whole thing might sound kind of silly. But, I think these hours of the day can be hard because I make them hard. I get wrapped up in something else besides enjoying my family and then I get mad because I'm not enjoying my family . . . it makes no sense. If I can simplify those hours to focus on a few things rather than a lot of things then it's so much easier to obtain my happy family goal.

I have to say, it has worked wonders so far. When four hits, whatever else I am doing stops and I sit down and spend some time with the girls doing whatever they are doing. Then I start getting dinner ready and the house a bit tidied up and I just feel so much less stressed when Garrett walks through the door. I'm not trying to unpack, and keep the girls happy, and make dinner, and tidy up, and finish up a blog post, and make a phone call, and deal with the current temper tantrum all at the same time. (Which, by the way, dealing with all that at the same time ALWAYS leads to me dealing with the girls in a less than desirable way - which gets me frustrated with myself about being frustrated with a kid who is just being a kid - which just gets the ball rolling for a stressed-out unenjoyable evening!)

So, there you have it. The rest of you probably don't have a problem with trying to do twenty things at once - but I certainly do. So, my first goal of "Project Bewitch" is to start simplifying at four-o-clock each day and not to concentrate on all the projects at once (which I know I shouldn't be trying to do twenty things at once at ANY hour of the day, but I am just going to take the wise advice from What About Bob? and practicing taking "baby steps").

Wanted: A Shoe Stand

Due to the wetness, the slushiness, and the dirt of our new great state it has become necessary to make a change - our home has become a no-shoe home. (Did I mention the white carpets . . . also a contributing factor).

I never thought I would be the owner of a no-shoe house. I don't like walking around with bare feet and I don't like wearing socks or slippers all day either - which only leaves you with one option: wearing shoes.

The problem with bare feet is that it leads to cold feet. And the problem with slippers is that when I need to go outside then I have to change into shoes, which I never actually do (why would I? I am only going a few steps out the door). So my slippers get all wet and yucky really fast.

Plus, I don't like making people feel like they HAVE to take their shoes off in my house. I want people to feel comfortable and there are many good reasons why a person might not feel comfortable taking off their shoes. (Stick foot, unmatched socks, hole in socks, bunyons, whatever . . . people have their reasons to keep their piggly-wigglies covered up.) Now I don't plan to announce to each house guest that their shoes must be removed, but a line of shoes next to the door might put on the pressure for them to do so.

My final dislike for a no-shoe house is the pile of shoes that accumulates at each door and never accumulate in your closet. (I am a creature of habit and all my life it has been the habit that shoes go in the closet.) This accumulation not only seems to turn into an eye-sore, but it also becomes a fun play spot for the kids. (I can't tell you how many times I have gone shoe hunting here . . . why do I buy my kids toys if they find so much entertainment in every other household item that is NOT intended for being used as a toy?)

So, I am on a mission to find a couple of shoe racks that will hopefully organize my current shoe problem.

Wish me luck!

Kenzisms - Daddy Rocked the Cradle

This is a Kenzism from several months ago that I forgot to record.

We were all sitting around the kitchen one evening after dinner when and I asked a question of sorts that led Garrett to excidetly say:

I Do!

Kenzie: Me Too!

Garrett: Me Three!

Kenzie: (without hesiation) No Daddy, I three, Jordyn one, and you forty.

(In case you don't know, it's funny because my husband is currently 29)

A New Label

My last posting about the overly abundant television expopsure that my children are currently enjoying kind of floored me. You see, at the end of the posting I was trying to decide what to "label" the posting for the blog. Right then I realized that Dora is an icon of sorts for the pre-school aged child, so I quickly added the new label of "pre-school years".

Then it kind of hit me how fast this whole parenting thing is happening. I've already been through some major stages of a child's life - the newborn, the toddler years, and now I am right in the midst of the pre-school years.

Now, I know I can't boast having gone too far due to the fact that I am yet to expereince the elementary years, the teenage years, the adult years, and hopefully those grandparent years that I have heard are quite the treat.

Time is flying. I hope I am doing a right good job of enjoying the ride.