FHE

At some point in my life, I heard a quote from a General Authority that stated that if a family holds Family Home Evening regularly that the children would be protected from the evils of the world and have eternal blessings. Here is a link http://lds.org/study/topics/family-home-evening?lang=eng   This is a pretty powerful promise.  I want my children to stay active in our church for so many reasons.  In the most simple way I can explain it, I will say that following the teachings of the LDS church brings me immense happiness and peace in my own life, so of course I want that for my children.  And this promise is that they will have that in their lives if we hold family home evening. That sounds so simple, so deceptively simple.  Kind of like those infomercials that my children get sucked into on lazy Saturday mornings when our antenna chooses to work and someone flips on the T.V.  “Buy these knives and you will NEVER buy another knife again!” or “Get this shimmy shammy whim wham cleaning cloth and you will be able to scrub every street in New York City using only water.  Then just wring out the cloth and move on to Baltimore. It will never wear out!”  Or, “Have you always wanted to roast an entire pig, but never knew how?  With our super duper industrial pig roasting apparatus, you can be in porky heaven for the rest of your life. Once you try whole pig, you will never go back to plain old store bought bacon again.  Comes with a free 30 day money back guarantee, minus gargantuan shipping and handling charges! Order now and we’ll send you the mini pigeon roaster free for your Manhattan friends!”  Seriously, it just sounds too good to be true, and sometimes too ridiculous to work.  But, having faith, and believing in things that that seem too good to be true, but get proven to be good and true time and again as we test our faith, my husband and I truly do believe that holding family home evening is one of the vital keys to helping our children develop testimonies and a desire to live the lifestyle that we are trying to model.  So we never miss a week if we can avoid it.  We did miss a few weeks ago when Emmeline had her wire swallowing E.R./O.R./Big bills adventure on a Monday night.  Hopefully we will get a bye for that one.  We really do try though.  We don’t schedule other events on Monday nights.  We don’t participate in sports on Monday nights.  If our whole family can’t go to something, we won’t be there on a Monday night. 

I just thought I’d start by explaining why, like Sacrament meeting attendance, we feel FHE is so important.  And now I want to describe a typical Family Home Evening in the Pitts house.  Sometimes the kids are outrageously naughty, but this is just an average night.  This was our home on Monday night. 

Dinner was late because I was tired.  I think that’s why. It’s kind of all a blur now. Maybe it was because I was reading a novel instead of making dinner on time.  But, I know dinner was late and I remember making my usual comment on such a night, “You guys have no idea how lucky you are to have dinner tonight.  Just 40 minutes ago I was really tempted to feed you cold cereal but I made you homemade pizza instead. You are so lucky.  SAY THANK YOU FOR DINNER!”  So, we got a late start on our normal start time of 7.  It must have been around 7:15 when we congregated in the living room and started singing some songs from the Primary Children’s Songbook.  And when we sing, the kids want to dance. And when they dance, they want to run.  And when they run, sometimes they get tired and are more sedate, so Daddy encouraged them and even charted the course for them to run circles throughout the lower level of the house.  They were off!  Actually, we were off-all of us. Emmeline flew through the air in Daddy’s stable arms and giggled along with the crowd.  I don’t know what is so funny about running in circles, but it made Clara and Audrey squeal with delight.  We ran and we ran and we ran.  We reversed direction and ran some more.  After about 15 minutes, the bigger kids started to lag, so we called the meeting to order.  Judd decided we would sing a song about family night.  Nobody knew the words, so he tried to teach them to us and we all made a passable attempt to learn them. Then, somebody said a prayer, at least I think somebody did.  Usually we share our schedules for the week, but instead Daddy asked the kids to all go find a Book of Mormon.  We have quite a few throughout the house.  They hunted high and low until they tracked down 7 copies that weren’t the more expensive leather bound ones and presented them to Daddy.  Then everyone found a bookmark and he said we’d be using them for scripture study from now on, so each person could have a copy.  By this point, everything had been going pretty well, probably because nobody had to sit still.  Then it was time for the lesson.  I think that is Secret Short Person Code for NAUGHTY TIME.  Clara and Audrey immediately started standing on their heads and singing.  I decided it was time for THE HUMAN SEATBELT for Audrey.  I held her gently but firmly on my lap.  She hates the human seat belt.  She screamed and wiggled and screamed and yelled, “I I can’t breathe!” while turning blue and gasping.  I really wasn’t even touching her middle, but she has this psychological block against being restrained so she was holding her breath.  After a few minutes, Judd had enough of this and ordered all the kids to go put on their p.js.  This sent Amy into a sobbing fit and she proclaimed, “Daddy! We have to have a lesson! I’ve had this lesson ready for weeks and the whole point of family night is TO LEARN THE GOSPEL!”  After we reassured her that we were just taking a break, she calmed down and complied.  The kids all eventually obeyed and we tried again for a lesson.  Audrey used a blanket and made a kitty cave under the piano bench, curling up quietly underneath.  Clara got rowdy and was put in Daddy’s version of a human seatbelt.  Timothy got moved away from Reuben and had a little stint as a “tooting cow” – don’t ask. Then we finally got down to business.  Amy told us the story of Laman and Lemuel and Nephi getting the brass plates from Laban. 

(Amy read for a while)

Amy: Clara, what happened? Who went to get the brass plates?

Clara: I forget stuff super duper fast.  I forgot!

Daddy: Come on Clara. Don’t let stuff go in one ear and out the other. Pay attention!

Clara, crying: I can’t make it go in this ear and not come out the other.  It keeps coming out!

Daddy: Amy, read it again. Clara, listen.

(Amy read again. Emmeline took this golden opportunity to hunt for foreign objects on the floor with appealing textures.)

Daddy: Clara, what did Laban do?

Clara:  It goes through my right ear and then out! It goes through inside my body and then out!

So, that was successful.  At least, nobody was bleeding.  We asked Amy, after 14 pages, to save the rest for next time and decided it was time to move on to the game. The kids love having an activity every family night.  Timothy wanted to play the winking murder game.  He wanted to play it last week too but I vetoed it because so many eyes were hurting with pink eye.  Reuben and Amy wanted to play Nice Kitty.  For what seemed to be a very long time, many children chanted “Nice Kitty! Nice Kitty! Nice Kitty!” until Daddy hushed them up with a large growl and said we would play Timothy’s game. Reuben acquiesced as only he can do, “The majority is omnipotent in this family, unless Mommy and Daddy say otherwise.  They are the dictators.”  Timothy grabbed some paper and ripped off pieces to mark with O’s and one X.  Well, he did that after he counted the people. I guess there are so many of us even we can’t remember how many.  We spent several delightful minutes “killing” each other with our winks.  The best rounds were when Audrey had the X and she didn’t do anything and when I had the X and I killed everyone before I could be accused.  And then, it had been long enough. We did our duty and we were done.  We sang something.   I’m sure it was wonderful, whatever it was.  And Audrey volunteered for the closing prayer.  I attempted to help her and suggested, “We’re thankful we could have family night.” But she had other plans.”No! Please bless the food. . .  .“So, we’re still working on prayers.  “What’s for dessert?  I want ice cream! I want frozen lemonade! I want cake! I want I want I want.” It rang in my ears and I tried to divvy up the goods so everyone would be happy.  Amy came up to us and sighed and stated,” All I want for dessert is ice water. . . and an otter pop.” Whew! We were done. We made it.  We survived!  We even had fun, really we did.  I guess you would have to be there to understand.  And please, feel free to visit.  We’d be happy to have visitors any Monday from 7-8.  You can play the pig game, nickel game, polar bears and penguins, charades or some other fabulous game with us, learn about Jesus, help us restrain the little ones, and enjoy a delicious dessert.