Thanks-giving FHE

Yesterday we had a great lesson in RS about the importance of gratitude. I've been seeing all the November-is-grateful-month posts on FB but haven't felt inclined to join in. The lesson, though, reminded me that it is never a bad time to get on the grateful bandwagon. So, for FHE tonight, I brought back one of our favorite November rituals. Phil and I started this three years ago. It has taken slightly different forms but has kept its original intent and purpose.

Behold the Thanks-giving Turkey:

Every night from tonight until Thanksgiving we will add a feather of gratitude to this little Turkey. He looks pretty bare right now, but just you wait!

Eden and I talked about the importance of gratitude. I asked her why it is good to say "thank you" and she said, "because then you'll probably get more stuff!" Clearly, I have some work to do.

Yesterday in the RS lesson there was a quote that said, "What if you woke up today with only the things you thanked Heavenly Father for yesterday?" I used that concept and said to Eden, "what if I took back everything except the things you have thanked me for?" She replied, "I'd be really, really mad." We talked about it and then I said, "what if Heavenly Father took back everything except what we thanked him for yesterday? Did you thank Him for our house? Did you thank Him for your mom?" etc. She realized she would have food and that is about it, no house or mom or toys or friends. I think her prayer tonight was the first time she's ever thanked Him for her mommy. Nice!

She is so excited to add feathers to our bare little bird. I told her that she needs to be thinking through out the day so that she'll know what to put on the feather each night.

I'm thankful for a great lesson yesterday and the inspiration to bring back the Thanks-giving Turkey.

To make the turkey I bought a piece of foam-core at the dollar store. I used brown wrapping paper to cut out the body (just a basic pear-like shape). I cut a triangle beak and red for that floppy thing (Layne can tell us in the comments what that is called). His eyes are just white paper and blue paper with accents from a black marker. His legs are from scraps of orange paper. I cut out feathers from a variety of colors. It is all pretty basic but makes a cute bird in my humble opinion. In past years we have done individual birds (that were smaller) and the first year we used a pumpkin for the body and I just cut out a head and feathers that we pinned onto it. The problem is that the pumpkin didn't quite make it to Thanksgiving.


Glossary: 
FHE - Family Home Evening, a family night held once a week (usually on Mondays) in Latter-day Saint homes. Ours follows this basic pattern: song, prayer, flag salute, "Kesler Kudos" (a time to thank one another), lesson (brief), activity, treats, prayer.


RS - Relief Society, the women's organization within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is the largest women's organization in the world.


FB - Facebook (but I'm guessing you already knew that!) :)

St Patrick's Day Treats

Here is what we (plus other family members) are having for our FHE treat tonight. Eden and I worked on these together and we're pretty happy with how they all turned out.

Shamrock cupcakes, rainbow cake, mini cupcakes as pots of gold

"Teach Me"

Lately, Eden's favorite song is "Teach Me To Walk in the Light." The words follow:

Teach me to walk in the light of His love.
Teach me to pray to my Father above.
Teach me to know of the things that are right.
Teach me, teach me, to walk in the Light.

Sometimes during the day she will just walk up to me and say, "teach me, momma, teach me."

No pressure or anything!

So, we try to teach her good things. We try to teach her that she is loved by Heavenly Father and so is everyone else. We try to teach her to love others and to be nice. We try to teach her that we love her no matter what. We try to teach her to be kind and to share.

Today, Kendal and Trey came over for a little while. Now, keep in mind that Eden will sometimes say (out of the blue) "I love Trey!" She seriously loves him and his sisters and his mommy. Today, however, she was not in the mood to share. Instead of "I love Trey" what I mostly heard was "Stop it Trey, that's mine." Trey was a very good sport and tried to keep his friend happy but Eden was just not going to be happy. It was so bad that she actually chose to take a nap two hours early when I told her she'd have to take a nap if she couldn't choose to be happy without one.

That is when I decided upon the topic for tonight's Family Home Evening lesson.

While she slept I prepared a lesson on sharing.

Here is my well executed lesson plan:
While holding hands and walking in a circle the three of us sang, "Sharing with friends is fun to do, fun to do, fun to do..." Then she got to insert her friend's names. We included Trey, then Bayley, next was Kendal, then Erin, and finally Corrie. Then I showed her pictures of children sharing toys and we talked about how happy they were. Finally I got out my sewing measuring tape (which Eden loves to play with) and I shared it with her, then Daddy shared his brush (she loves his brush for some reason) and then she shared a toy with both of us. We cheered and clapped and talked about how happy this made us.

See, I'm a good teacher!

Yeah, that is what I thought until I said, "so the next time Trey is here what are you going to do?" and she replied, "say STOPIT TREY, THAT'S MINE"

I guess I've got some work to do with this "teach me" business.