Family Home Evening

We had a great Stake Conference this past weekend, although we didn't make it to the Saturday night sessions since we were at Talin's Choir Concert... but that's for another blog. Anywho, my point is (and yes, there really is a point here), that I learned much. One of the things I learned was from Ellen Hadfield's talk about FHE. I learned I need to "chilax" as my kids would say and go with the flow more. Usually I'm okay but a few weeks ago I gave a lesson out of Mosiah that I was really excited about, but the boys couldn't seem to focus enough to listen and I got pretty frustrated. There was just toooo much 'Jedi Knight' activity going on for my peace of mind. So, having been reminded of what I already knew, which was to change things up a bit every once in awhile so everyone can relax and have fun, we had a bit of an activity based FHE last night. It went pretty well, too. I went to the office supply in Price and bought some cheap calligraphy pens and printed some sample and practice pages off the web and Voilà! We had a great time learning the basics of Calligraphy. Surprisingly, Tom especially enjoyed it. Jaron used regular colored markers since I didn't think he'd get the whole angled-tip thing and he did a fabulous job copying the fancy letters. I was surprised how he jumped in and went to town. They all did quite well, we all had a fun time coming up with funny words and phrases to copy down. Then we had pie for desert. A good time was had by all with very little prep and pain. Who knows? Maybe now that they've had to slow down and consciously think about it, maybe they'll all take a little more care with their regular day-to-day writing and maybe we'll see some improvement there as well. Hmmm... Maybe...