For the most part, home church at the White house is short, sweet, and to the point. Brevity helps us avoid (or at least stave off) the inevitable tussles that seem to occur whenever we are all in the same room trying to Do Something Spiritual Together. Today I approached home church with a different attitude: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em! The Come Follow Me Primary manual had a stellar idea that was right up my family's aisle. I love it when pre-made lesson plans are perfect! That rarely happens, because I'm picky and tend to resist overly cheesy activities. This week it worked!
Since home church in the White House usually ends in a dog pile/battle anyways, I figured we may as well make it a meaningful battle today. We each read a verse from the Book of Mormon about the various ways that Captain Moroni fortified his people against their enemies, and briefly talked about how we are in a spiritual war against sin now. We wrote ways to fortify ourselves against evil on cardboard shields (daily prayer, daily scripture study, etc.) and took turns reading each other's shields. After that, we all wrote wrong choices/temptations on sheets of paper. Then we crumpled up the bad-choice papers and used them as ammo, throwing them at each other and blocking with the shields in an epic family Sunday school showdown.
It was somehow both hilarious and profound.
Every time I bent down to pick up another bad-choice/temptation-paper-wad, my shield lowered and I was pelted with temptations and bad choices on all sides. When I left the temptation paper wads alone and focused only on blocking shots from others, nobody was able to hit me. When I got distracted by laughing and watching the wild battle unfold in our small family room, I was also an easy target.
Like I said, hilarious and profound.
It felt good to turn the weekly Sunday battle into a success!
Bring it on.
Other assorted recent pictures:
Rope swing = joy.
First garden harvest. So it begins. There are dozens and dozens of green tomatoes on our plants. We're teetering on the edge of that harvest-cliff!
Last week, the girls colored during home church before the wrestling started.
Rose can make cookies all completely by herself! It is the best because making cookies is not something I enjoy, but it is something Rose enjoys. Since ALL of us enjoy eating cookies, everyone wins!
Rose has been experimenting with fancy hairdos on my long hair. She insists on taking pictures of every hairdo so I can see them and admire them. It's been 11 months since my last haircut, and I don't really see a salon appointment in my near future, haha.
We did have eye appointments this past week. Amber got bored. Jeff, Rose, and I ordered spare glasses. Jay's eyes are still 20/20.
Jay and Rose started up piano lessons again this week. They will do one in-person lesson per month, and virtual piano lessons for the other weeks each month. They use the Tonora app to track their practicing, and Rose likes to take new profile pictures regularly.
The heat wave rolled past us and left us with some glorious cool mornings this week. Rose lounged in the sun, dangling from the rope swing. After last week's 5 days in triple digit temps, it felt good to have the sun feel good again this week.
"Take a picture of me, Mommy!"
Another Rosie (Rose + selfie = Rosie)
I underestimated the effects of overnight irrigation on thick dust while running past the rows of grapes behind our house on Thursday morning. It was a cartoon-y slip, flail, and fall with a muddy splat. The minute my booty squelched into the cool gooey mud, I started laughing. It was so utterly ridiculous! The mud was so silky, I didn't get any bruises or abrasions at all--my softest landing ever!
It did take rather a while to scrub my watch off with the fingernail brush and rinse out my clothes when I returned home.
After my muddy fall on Thursday's run, I did yoga outside grass without a mat to keep the mud out of the house. This blue sky and leafy tree view was serene.
The kids have been playing LOTS of front porch games of Settlers of Catan. That game is long.
Home.
No comments:
Post a Comment