Recently I read a biography of L. Tom Perry, a leader in our church.  One tradition that he grew up with was Saturday afternoon family time.  In the summer, his family would go out to Logan Canyon and play on Saturday afternoons after working all the rest of the week.  In the winter, they would still spend time together at home on Saturday afternoons. We have tried to do that in our family to a lesser extent, but I'd like to do it more. Saturdays are a balancing act between play and work.  Despite my last post about teaching kids to work, sometimes we spend too much time working.  Another challenge is getting everyone to give up time with friends and come be with the family.  It helps to put it on the calendar at the beginning of the month so the teenagers can plan for it. And I think I need to make a list of good activities to help us think of ideas. Last Saturday, we enjoyed a little hike.  Everyone except our missionary was there.  The weat...

The other day I read this blog post that I really liked.  Find it here.   It was all about how life needs to be less about making fun our ultimate goal and more about teaching kids how to enjoy work.  I totally agree. I remember back when one of my oldest children was in junior high and I was complaining to the school about the movies they were watching.  These were not educational movies; they were popular culture type movies and I couldn't understand why the teacher was showing them instead of actually teaching them the curriculum. So I complained and the response was something like "kids need to have fun sometimes!"  My thought was, "That's not why I send my children to school!"  And I didn't think my children were being overworked at school, in the first place. The challenge in my life is to convince my children that learning how to work is vitally important! They need to know I'm doing it for them, and not just to make their lives difficult....

About 7 years ago, our family had the opportunity to participate in the Nauvoo Pageant.  We had applied kind of on a whim because my friend had recommended it as a great experience.  We actually got accepted for the last week of the pageant.  We were in the "Gold" cast.  We participated in the Preshow Country Fair which involved my older boys playing in a band and the rest of us playing stickball with all the visitors. You can see the Nauvoo LDS Temple in the background.  The costumes were hot to wear in the humidity but don't we look authentic?  We also got to be in the finale of the pageant and then mingled with the audience afterwards.  We loved it! It was a good experience and we would have probably gone back to do it again except our youngest daughter was born a few months later and her health challenges have kept us closer to home. Looks like a pretty serious pitcher! We hadn't really considered going back until late Dece...

Something great my mother passed on to me is cooking breakfast according to a schedule.  It may seem like a trivial thing and maybe even strange to a lot of people, but I have done it ever since I got married and it has been so helpful.  My schedule is not exactly the same as hers.  In fact, my husband tells a funny story from when we were first married and living in New Mexico.  We had oatmeal (which we call mush) on Thursday and then left that day to visit my parents.  We got up on Friday morning and my mom was serving mush.  I said, "I don't want to have mush two days in a row!"  My mom replied, "If you don't want to have mush for breakfast, Paula, you should know better than to come on a Friday!"  Yep, that's how it was. Here's my schedule: Monday, Thursday:  oatmeal, toast, fruit Tuesday, Friday:  eggs, toast, fruit (and hot chocolate on Fridays) Wednesday, Sunday:  cold cereal (and a smoothie on Wednesday) Saturday:...