FHE: General Conference, September 2011

First, if you are wondering what Family Home Evening (FHE) is, it’s a time (Monday evening is a customary for Mormons, but whatever works really) that a family sets apart each week to spend together. For a better explanation and ideas on how to organize your own FHE go here.




In our family, the first Family Home Evening of September and March are dedicated to General Conference. He teach Caleb (and now Nate!) about the role of a prophet, play games and then as a family create a list of questions and concerns we may have.


This time we have five items that we will pray about each day in personal prayers as well as together during our family prayers. That’s a lot of praying! It still surprises me (although it shouldn’t with all that prayer) that most of our concerns and questions are met and answered before conference weekend.

Our five items range from subjects like harmony in the home, to Mike pursuing his PhD sooner rather than later, to Caleb making new friends. Any matter can be put on our prayer roll for General Conference. Even toes.

For our lesson this year we took turns pulling names of prophets from a paper bag. Mike and I would tell the story pertaining to each prophet; sometimes we would sing the correlating verse from the song Follow the Prophet. For each prophet there was a simple activity that could go as quick or as long as Caleb wanted. We didn’t get to all of them, but, hey, I have a three year old. What do I expect?

Here’s the list of activities with their prophet:
Enoch- we took turns hiding and finding a paper heart- because the city of Enoch was of “one heart"
Noah- played memory with animal cards- because Noah gathered the animals two by two
Moses – whoever selected Moses had to dress up in a headdress and play “Prophet Says”
Samuel- have a person pretend to sleep, while you sing Samuel’s verse from Follow the Prophet then shout the chorus and wake them up
Daniel- made a lion paper bag puppet and practiced opening and shutting the mouth of the lion, then pretended the lion was going to eat family members and let Caleb command the lion to “STOP!”
Now (President Monson)- we wore ties as we sang the final verse of Follow the Prophet

Should be do Project Semi-annual again? What do you think? :P

TOW #1

In order to get on the blogging track again, I’ll be posting once a week. If I don’t have anything especially grand to post- I’ll slap on a Thoughts of the Week (TOW) post. A jotted list of what crosses my noodle throughout the week.
Along with the contemplation catalog I will post a photograph of one of the kiddos to appease grandparents everywhere.

• At dinner two thoughts occur as I watch my son slather his entrée with mustard. First, I recall the explanation of this condiment practice dictated by Malcolm Gladwell and then I tally the number of corndogs with mustard I ate during the child’s incubation. Conclusion: Possibly too many.
• I want to paint the boy’s room the color of Mo Willem’s pigeon.
• If Nate is my rainbow baby; Caleb is my ark child.
• Nothing looks as sinister as a strawberry kool-aid mustache.
• No pink as far as the eye can see.
• I could string up Christmas lights on the back deck and call it a date.
• Caleb still wants to be a doctor for Halloween still.

Thanks Juying for this week's photograph!

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