FHE: It's quality, not quantity that counts, right?

I love the idea of Family Home Evening. Taking each Monday night to spend time together and learn about the gospel as a family and enjoy each other's company and sing songs and eat treats is awesome. Unfortunately, Chuck's at work every other Monday evening and I'm at school every Monday evening . . . and our efforts of adaption (Family Home Morning) haven't come together consistently. A couple of weeks ago, however, the stars aligned - my class was cancelled and Chuck had already taken the night off.

In the midst of school, work, traveling, and everyday life our family had been struggling a wee bit with expressing appreciation for one another so I borrowed an old seminary idea for our activity: 'barf' bags. In seminary it stood for 'be a real friend' but for FHE we just called 'em our special bags :) We hung the bags up on the counter and placed pens and scrap paper nearby.

During the week we wrote little notes of love/appreciation and put them in the corresponding bags; I may have forged a couple 'from' the little boys.

They stayed there for three weeks until this past Monday when we pulled them down and read all of the notes aloud. It was so fun to see what we noticed and expressed gratitude for, both to each other and to the little boys. It's amazing how far a few words can go to express love and appreciation :)

Oh, and from the random/cute department: Clyde ready to go run errands the other day. Pay special attention to the lack of shoes (I'm sure I had told him to put them on five times by then), MY purse, the sunglasses around his neck, and the car keys in his left hand. Goof.

Will doing 'cheers!' Clyde's always been a hand-clasper (rather than an arms-folder) for prayer and Will's following suit. Then they like to say 'cheers' as they bump fists with all the other hand-claspers . . . Yep, after 'mama' and 'dada', Will's next word was 'cheers'. Also a goof.