Swords

This Monday, after years of neglect, I decided it was time to have family home evening. I've always had an excuse for not having it (tutoring, Tyler's never home, etc ) but after reading Ensign articles on parenting (I need some help in that dept) I realized it all came down to those primary answers (prayer, scriptures, FHE...). So even though Tyler was gone at work, I got busy planning (and Pinterest searching) and had a fun family home evening with the kids. It had a REALLY rocky start but once we got through the song (don't know why that part was so hard) it went really well.

We talked about the people of Ammon and how they made a promise to God to not fight anymore and buried their swords. We then decorated our own swords and put our names on them. We talked about what we did in our own family that caused contention/fighting and wrote it on our swords. Steven=hitting, Ben=pushing, Mommy=yelling, Lucy=books (& her habit of eating them) and Daddy told me to put work on his. Then we went into our backyard, dug a hole in what used to be my mini garden and buried our swords of contention.

Of course the boys were sad about burying their swords so I had to make them a couple of "swords of peace" to play with. And it was fun to say during the week, "No fighting! We buried our swords of fighting!" And honestly, this week was not perfect but it went a lot better than last week and I attribute that betterness to our better practicing of those primary answers. For some reason those things that should be so easy are not so easy to do but they are well worth the time and effort. I just have to remember that :)