F.H.E.

Order.

Routines and Organization and Patterns and Traditions and Order.  Things seem to run so much better when there is some kind of order to follow.

Family Home Evening, an evening spending time with just family learning spiritually and participating in wholesome recreational activities, has had an interesting development in our family.  I have enjoyed watching it morph into (what I hope is) a better and better family time.

When Daniel and I first got married, it was a little difficult to differentiate the evening and what we were doing.  Each evening we spent together and it seemed that we went on numerous dates a week.  After a General Conference talk about studying what we had learned in General Conference, we began studying the talks for our Family Home Evening each Monday.

Then Jozef came along, and as he became more aware of what was going on when we were together, we recognized the need to involve him so that it was truly Family Home Evening.  The Nursery Manual for the Church became our key to success for him, because the lessons are age-appropriate, along with the suggested learning activities and methods, but they are also scriptural and gospel-based.

Daniel and I continued a "companionship inventory," where we studied the talks from General Conference and discussed how to apply the principles taught into our lives.

As Jozef is getting older and more able to understand and accept responsibility, a HUGE help in successful Family Home Evenings (not that they happen every week ;) has been including him in the preparing and doing of the lesson or activity or prayer.

However...

• We sometimes miss our weekly planning meeting when Daniel assigns the lesson.
• We often get caught up in life's craziness so we don't take time to adequately prepare, whether we have the lesson or one of us is helping Jozef.
• We (as humans, I think) THRIVE on order so that we know what's going on and what the pattern is.

Thus enters:

I truly think that my excitement over this little Family Home Evening chart relates to the order it will bring into our weekly Monday evenings.  The chart, which I ordered on artscow as an unstretched canvas, will be framed and hung in our family room, where we will see it and have easy access to it.  Also, I plan to create (still in the process...) names or pictures representing the members of our family to velcro to the black circles in the above chart.

I really am so excited!

Our activities have also accumulated through the years.  Some popular ones that keep returning:  Mother, May I?, Hide and Go Seek, Red Light, Green Light, the Balloon Game, Ring Around the Rosies, etc.

Other traditions that have made the evening run smoother include cleaning up the front room before we start, sitting on the couch (so the running around is eliminated ;), and racing to see who can put pj's on first immediately following the activity and right before refreshments are served.

What traditions/routines/patterns have helped bring order and/or success to your Family Home Evenings?