Good One

For the past few years it seems that Family Home Evenings are becoming harder to convene, less meaningful, and rushed by the kids. They try to cram the entire program into a 20-minute time slot. I wish that could spend a few Monday evenings at my parents’ home in the 70’s. 20 minutes? We would be just getting to “Good Thought.” (If Mom was not on Opening Prayer.)

Our FHEs are often dotted with sibling conflict too. It becomes very discouraging.  Sometimes they play dumb. For example, I will tell Erika she’s conducting and she’ll say, “OK. Who’s on prayer?”

I gently remind her that we begin with song. She’ll say, “Oh yeah. Song.”

I can only hope that this is just an attempt at rushing the program. I figure that she has attended approximately 500 family nights, at least 300 of which should be in her cognitive memory. We have started with a song every time. 500 times song. 0 times start with anything else.

But last night was a “good” one, no rushing, no bickering, no conducting confusion. I think a big key was that Sean joined us, so everyone was a little better behaved, especially my firstborn. For our lesson we read a letter from my nephew on a mission and then wrote him letters.

Our “activity” was retro-style. Kara brought out a small beach ball and we played “keep it up.” We used to play this often when the kids were young but it has easily been five years since we last played. We set a new record last night: 25. That isn’t earth-shattering but given that I am not as good and we have some weak spots still, we did pretty well.

Oh it seems like we have a lot of “bad ones” for every “good one,” but the good ones are so great.