Thoughtful Sunday

I was thinking today about what I would have to write about because I subbed in nursery but I have to say that new nursery manual they have is awesome. I am defiantly getting one, if you have young kids it would be great for Family Home Evenings. My sister also sent an email that someone did of 48 Family Home Evening lessons that correspond with the weekly themes of primary this year. It's great I have just been printing them off and that's what we have been doing for family home evening. Yeah for the over achievers who do things like this for us lazy bums :). Here is the link to it http://www.4shared.com/file/81463881/93c1610a/2009FHEBook.html (sorry you might to cut and paste I don't know how to do the cool link thing yet).
I have been thinking a lot about Family Home Evening. It's something that Jeremy and have discussed often, I won't go into details but we have realized how crucial it is for our children. My kids call it Happy Home Evening and if we are being grumpy Hadley will say, "Remember it is Happy Home Evening Night". I had it regularly growing up. I can't say I remember very many specifically I am sure most were repetition of things I already new, and as we know repetition in the gospel is not a bad thing it's just helps.
One example of something that I learned from family home evening at a young age is that I remember my Dad saying "never get a credit card" so I never have. As I now live by that rule it has helped tremendously in my life. From this I realized that we will never know the impact of what we say and how it will affect our children's future. I was probably only nine or ten when it was said but it has stuck with me through the years and I am eternally grateful for it.
I have a good friend who is not LDS but loves the idea of family a night so every week she has a lesson with her kids and does a fun activity with them. She made a comment that by setting one night a week apart for this it makes it so nice to talk about some of the things you really want to teach your kids but are not sure when is a good time. For example we were talking about teaching our children about what is appropriate for how people touch you I told her we taught this in Family Home Evening about how Heavenly Father created out bodies and how special they are and that we all have special parts and that no one should touch them and why and so forth. She then did a similar thing with her own children the next time they had family night and it wasn't awkward because they were use to Mom or Dad teaching some sort of lessen at that time.
I love that for one night out of the week we focus on just our little family what a great thing and good idea whether we are LDS or not.
As for our little family we need to do better and prepare more and involve the kids in the planning better but as with everything we always can do a little better :).
Have a 'HAPPY FAMILY HOME EVENING" tomorrow night.