Gratitude Tree & Giving Thanks Daily FHE

We put up our Gratitude Tree again for the month of November.  It has been a lot of fun adding a leaf everyday and reading what everybody is thankful for this year.  This is one of our favorite family traditions we started a couple of years ago - see here & here for past years trees.

We also had a great family night lesson the other night on the importance of having gratitude in the midst of challenges.  We talked about this quote:

The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts.

No Americans have been more impoverished than these who,

nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.

~H.U. Westermayer

And then watched this short video:

Family Night Fun

Monday night we also had a rockin' game of Freeze Tag going on inside to go along with our FHE lesson on gratitude. It was hard to get any clear action shots, but here are a few of the "frozen" shots.

 

Family Night Football

A couple weeks ago we played football for family night.  When we play as a family, there are usually a few extra rules you don't always see on tv, like automatic penalties for running over the toddler eating the popsicle, you know, things like that!



Jake trying to stop Michael while Luke runs additional interference





Jake scoring a touchdown,
while Trevor is busted with an
illegal block downfield

 

The best line of the night came when Jake, Don and I were on offense and Jake wanted to make a plan of attack, so he called for us to  

"CUDDLE UP!". 

It made all of us laugh as we cuddled up in our huddle. 

Apparently cuddle up could also be a form of tackling here :)

Eventually the trees, bushes and ice pops won over Hayley, Jake and Luke.

It was a fun family night of football, although I think it pained Don to hear some of his youngest children calling huddles, "cuddles" and touchdowns, "goals".  Something tells me this won't be our last football session!

Good Sports

We like to play games of all types around here, and can occasionally be a little too competitive :) 

So a couple of weeks ago we had a family home evening lesson about good sportmanship.  We talked about what it means to be a good sport and went over four basic principles that we should always do - Follow the Rules, Always Do your Best, Be Gracious in Losing, and Be Humble in Winning.  We went over some fun scenarios and quotes by famous sports people & talked about how being a good sport is important in everything we do, not just when we play games.  We ended by playing a fun hockey game that our friends gave us earlier in the day.

Be Strong & of a Good Courage

Back to school time is filled with family traditions. One of my favorites is kicking off the year with a special family night, introducing our family theme for the school year. We took down last year's theme off the fridge & put up our new theme.

This year we choose a scripture from the Old Testament. It is Joshua 1:9 which says:

"Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest."

There are so many amazing truths & applications within this scripture that we will have fun talking about during the next year. Monday we kicked off our new theme, talked about the scripture and what it means to be strong and to have good courage. Everyone wrote or drew a picture of someone/something that that was strong and showed courage.

Hayley's Drawing about Daniel being strong and having courage

We also talked about not being afraid when we are in new situtations, like school - that we are never alone. As Jake said, "You mean I can have a little bit of Jesus in my heart with me so I won't be scared." That's right buddy!

This is actually the 2010 youth theme for the church as well, so there are so many amazing things online to help reinforce this theme like this music video .

We ended with a fun treat to remind us to Be Strong!