Family Home Evening - playing Yahtzee!

Our activity with Family Home Evening often ends with Kayley begging to play a game.  We love Candyland, Chutes and Ladders and Yahtzee.  Especially Yahtzee.  Kayley"kisses" and "blows" on the dice for good luck...and she seems to think the louder and more obnoxiously she can shake it up...the better her chances are for a good roll!

FHE - Fruits of the Spirit

We had another fun FHE this week! We started an Apple unit study on Monday in homeschool (I'll do a separate post on this later) since we lucky enough to receive a HUGE bag of free apples. So, I thought it might be fun to correlate our short Apple unit and our Family Home Evening this week. We talked about "Fruits of the Spirit" from Galations 5:22-23
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law."

Then I told a cute story called "The Parable of the Apple Tree." It goes:

Once upon a time there was an apple tree which God had created. It was a young tree without any leaves or fruit. One night the young tree saw the brilliant stars and was very unhappy. He wished for himself to have these sparkling stars on his branches so that he too would be beautiful.

The next morning, God noticed that the tree was unhappy, and He said to him, "Let me make something for you. I will dress you up in a beautiful mantle of green so that you will be beautiful to behold. Then you will not be so unhappy."

But the tree was not content with God's plan. "I do not want a mantle of green, I want stars." The next morning the tree saw that God had not given him stars, but green leaves. And the tree frowned upon it.

Once again the tree said to God, "I want stars," but instead, God gave him beautiful red fruit. The tree was even more unhappy. The wind saw how unhappy the apple tree was and the wind became unhappy too. The wind blew and tried to set the apple tree free of the leaves and the fruit, but he failed. However, as the wind blew, some of the leaves and fruit fell to the ground. One piece of fruit broke into two pieces right in the middle. When the tree looked upon the broken fruit, guess what he saw? (Slice the apple in half and show it to the children. When you slice apple horizontal in the middle you will see the shape of a star.) Inside the fruit was the shape of a star!

Many times you and I, like the apple tree in the story, want a special gift like one God has given to someone else. We may even try to give God instructions as to what is best for us. We must remember that God gives each of us special gifts as he deems best. When we rejoice in the gifts he has given us and use them to do his work, then we will shine like the stars.

We finished our evening with a delicious apple crisp that Kayley (nearly) made all by herself!

The parable of the Apple Tree can be found here:
http://www.sermons4kids.com/apple_tree_parable.htm

FHE - Satans Web

I know this is a little late, but we did a great FHE this week on Satans Web. This is the perfect time of year for this lesson because you can buy that fake spider web so cheap right now! We hung the web, talked about how Satan can 'pull you into his web' by making bad things look good. We discussed what a spiders web really does, how they are sticky and are used to catch prey. We hung up some little papers that discuss what we do that can make us get caught in Satans web (ie. like, disobedient, anger, lying, speaking hurtful words, etc) and what we can do to avoid that trap! We also talked about who Satan is and why he does NOT want us to be a happy family. (I pulled this right out of the new gospel principles manual).
Then we made spider 'cookies' with sugar cookies, frosting and pretzel sticks!

(The Spooky Skeleton Jammies were a nice touch don't you think?)

FHE - Reverence

Tonights FHE was on Reverence!

I loved this idea that I found on FHE Planner.
I took a bag and drew small pics of what we can do to be reverent.
I drew eyes, mouth, ears, toys, etc.
Each time Kayley pulled an item out of the bag we discussed what we should do to be more reverent during Sacrament, Primary, and at home.

For our scripture we used Leviticus 19:30
Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord.

and the talk from Elder Oaks (May 2010 Friend) called
"How should I behave in Sacrament Meeting?"

Was one of our better 'discussions' during FHE!

FHE - Modesty...

For FHE, and to help kick off our 7 Day Modesty Challenge, I thought it would be appropriate to teach the girls (yeah, I know, Maggie wasn't really listening) about modesty. We used the article "Modest at Any Age" from the May 2010 issue of The Friend. We talked about what it meant to be modest and what the standards of modesty and grooming are according to our church's (and the Lords) standards and expectations.

We used the Modesty Checklist
(also found in the May 2010 issue of the Friend)
to evalute several pictures of 'tweens
(who, by the way, do not typically dress
modestly in fashion catalogs! Holy moley!)

It reads:
Shoulders covered?
Shirt covers tummy?
Shorts or Skirts go to the Knee?
Shirt not low cut?
Clothing not tight?
Sloppiness?
Combed hair?
Clothes not torn, saggy or holey to fit in with a style?
Labels on clothing not rude or offensive?

Then we read from 1 Timothy 2:9
Women adorn themselves in modest apparel...

To test our knowledge of modesty,
for our activity we made a life-size Kayley paper doll,
and dressed her in modest clothing!

Tracing Kayley...

Getting Miss Paperdoll stuck to the wall...

Drawing panties (can't have her naked under her skirt!)

Curly hair...

Hairbows are a necessity.

Fully dressed Miss Paperdoll.

O' Pioneer!

Tonights FHE was in celebration of Pioneer Day on July 24th. Daddy was so clever we even had a 'Conestoga' on our pioneer trek. Kayley went all out and put on her best pioneer frock. We discussed what it was like to be a pioneer, we learned the song "Pioneer Children Sang as they Walked", and we enjoyed a dinner of pioneer flapjacks and salt pork (ie. pancakes and bacon!)

Some summer catch up... Random Pictures.

Here are some random pictures:

I tried to make a little play area for Maggie. I put "bumpers" on all 4 sides. It worked for about a week, then she managed to escape. Soooo...I ordered a Super Yard. Maggie is EVERYWHERE. She might as well be crawling she gets around so well.

Another weird sleeping position at naptime. LOL!

I finished Maggie's name project for her wall...
I think it turned out pretty cute.

For FHE on Monday we made our own "brass/gold plates" out of tinfoil. It was awesome. We had 2 other couples over and we all picked our favorite scripture, discussed them, and then "engraved" them on our own metal plates and compiled them into a book for Kayley to keep.

There is probably more randomness to follow... I am behind in my blogging I know. I need to get caught up!

Family Home Evening - To the Movies! Ponyo

For FHE tonight we went to the movies! This is only Kayley's 2nd trip to the movie theater (after we went to go see UP! a few months ago). She did even better this time than she did last time.

Of course we bought some M&Ms...how can anybody go to the movies with out buying a 6 dollar bag of candy...(cough - strangle - expensive!).

We decided to see Ponyo.
It is the only thing playing in the theaters right now that is rated G.Ponyo is a magic fish-girl who runs away from her under water home to see more of the world. When she gets stranded on the beach she is rescued by Sōsuke.
Sōsuke and Ponyo become great friends and love each other dearly, but Ponyo's dissapearance from the sea brings an imbalance to the world.
The moon comes out of its orbit and satellites are falling from the sky like shooting stars.
Granmamare, Ponyo's sea mother, arrives and declares that if Sōsuke can pass a test, (that he will love Ponyo no matter what happens to her) then she can live as a human and the world order will be restored. I won't tell you how it ends...but it was an interesting movie.
Odd, but interesting.
Kayley liked it and I was surprised at how well it held her attention.

Moving Soon...

Can you believe that we are down to 14 days until the movers come?

I have been trying to explain to Kayley what is going to happen when we move.

It just wasn't making sense so we decided to "act it out" as a FHE activity.

So, here is our current "house"...

Kayley packed boxes and loaded them up in the "moving truck" along with little figures of Mommy, Daddy and Kayley.

Shoving Mommy in the truck...

When we get to our "new house" we unpack...
There we are at our new house!

Jonah and the Whale - FHE

For Family Home Evening tonight we learned about Jonah and the Whale. It was pretty clever. I created this big plastic whale out of a milk jug. Kayley had a fun time "swallowing" Jonah (one of her Fisher Price little people) and "spitting" him back out over and over again... A good FHE for a toddler!

A Homemade Game...

I made up this cute little game during family home evening a couple weeks ago and Kayley is totally hooked. She wants to play this game all the time... It's easy and keeps her entertained for hours. Enjoy the videos of Kayley playing our "Homemade Game."

Family Home Evening....

Tonight for Family Home Evening we learned about Noah's Ark. For fun we took a small tub and told Kayley that it was an Ark and we needed to fill it with as many animals as she could find. She had a blast! Who knew that something so simple could be so fun?

Adding Grover to the Ark.

I'm unclear on whether Grover is technically an animal?

Here comes Curious George!

Looking pretty good...

Adding Elmo to the Ark. Does anybody know what kind of animal Elmo is??

Adding Dumbo to the Ark.

Here is the Ark after it was filled with animals! I'm not sure at what point Mike Wazowski became an animal?

We finished up the evening with a cup of chocolate pudding!