Especially those of you with young children...Besides going to church on Sunday and any additional meetings you may have how do you spend your time? What activities do you engage in with your children? Do you have any special Sunday traditions or spiritual activities?
I love being able to spend time with our whole family each Sunday but I really want to spend it more productively, more wisely, and have more of a fun spirit filled day. I'd love your suggestions. Thanks!
4 comments:
We have quiet time every night at 8:00 pm. The kids either read boooks, scriptures, color pictures... whatever, but it has to be a quiet activity. It makes getting to bed on time easier as well as giving us some family time every day.
One exception. I have teenagers, so Wednesday nights the kids get home way too late after Mutual, we skip that night, and they go straight to bed.
Sunday is the only day that my kids get to see their Dad with regularity, so we generally do family things that they like to do with him. On the rare occasion that our kids are calm we play a prophet match game, Joseph Smith puzzles, and other things like that that I have made in my spare time. We only allow them to play the Friend, sometimes we get to sing primary songs together, and they are only allowed to watch scripture movies. Nothing as special as what I would like, but with 3 kids 4 and under I can't expect much more without disappointment.
We have one o'clock church, so our mornings stretch on for a while. One thing I do is let my kids (6 and 4) watch church movies while I'm getting ready. Their favorite are the sing-alongs. We have 2 DVDs, one of the Articles of Faith and one of several Primary songs, that they love to just watch and sing along with.
After church, we have time for dinner and MAYBE a visit to a grandma's house. Otherwise, we just enjoy a quiet house with no chores that have to get done!
Right now we have morning church, which is great. We have lunch right after church and then everyone takes a nap (even the grown-ups need one after wrangling a three-year-old and a baby at church for three hours!). We always have spaghetti for dinner, which is a fun family tradition (everyone loves it), and makes life easier for me since it's easy to make and I always know what we're having.
In the evening we try to do something together, like going for a walk or playing games. We also talk to grandparents over Skype.
If the three-year-old needs a distraction, I've created an account on our computer with lots of links to church movies and games from the Friend site.
I would love to get more quiet time for scripture study and journal writing and the like. Maybe I could sacrifice some naptime.
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