Family Times

I rarely write about religious things but, this time I'm going to make an exception. In the month of October, our ward made a theme of Family and ways to improve your family. Essentially they wanted to teach about how we can keep our family on the straight and narrow. While there weren't any revelations about how to do this (pray together, family home evening, family scripture study, etc), lessons and talks gave me a lot of suggestions and things to think about.

There are a few things I've been doing differently since the lessons of October. One is the way I treat my children. Like most parents, I can get angry and lose my patience. When that happens, I yell. One day in Relief Society, they said something that really stuck with me. The way we react and treat others when we are frustrated is how we are teaching our children to deal with frustration. So if we yell and hit, that's what our children will do - and they'll think it's okay. I hadn't thought about the kind

of example I was setting. I was only thinking about dealing with the problem at the moment.

Even though I know that family prayer and family scripture study are really important, we often forget about family prayer and don't have time for family scripture study. In one talk last month, a speaker said that a friend of hers had done family scripture study by reading only one verse per person each day. When I heard this i thought, "I can do that." We decided after dinner while we're already together at the table, we'll read from the scriptures. We've been doing a good job with it and I'm quite proud of us. Since we've been doing these simple things, Kyson wants to pray more and he wants to read the scriptures.

Tonight we read about Nephi returning to Jerusalem to get the plates from Laban and how they were staying in tents in the wilderness. Kyson understood and even prayed for tents tonight in his prayer. Last night in his prayer he prayed for hot dogs, Avatar, Bear Lake, Bob the tomato, Babe the pig, the couch, and the singing wrestlers from Veggie Tales. He's really enjoying praying and to be honest, he never lets us pray anymore and I'm fine with that.

I feel like these small things are making us happier and making a difference.