Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Who's Turn is it to Pray?



So, you know... we're supposed to pray morning, noon and night.... and then a prayer in our hearts all the time in between. That is a LOT of prayers, and as in any good family (lol) that means a lot of fighting over who's turn is it... whether they are fighting about who wants to pray or who doesn't want to pray.

Here's how we figure out who's turn it is. By these methods, we get a little order, we get a little chaos and we get a little fun, but it helps to make it a good experience all around and maybe it will give you some ideas on how to make it work in your family. 

Family Prayers Morning and Night: 
For these prayers we go in age-order rotation starting with Dad then down to the youngest. We do our best to remember who said it last... which gets kind of tricky when you happen to skip a few, so the more frequent, the greater the success on this one.

Breakfast Prayers:
It just so happens that we have 7 kids for 7 days :) Wasn't planned that way, but it works, so for each day of the week, a kid is assigned to give the breakfast prayer and pass out vitamins.

Dinner Prayers:
This is where the fun comes into play! My husband is a kid at heart and very creative so i credit this all to his brilliance... once dinner is on the table and ready to be served he plays a variety of little games to see who gets to pray. Sometimes he has the kids guess a color, a number, an animal or an object in the room. Whoever gets it right gets to pray! Sometimes he uses his random number app which choose between 1 and 10, each child in turn guesses a number, he shakes the phone and if they get it the same as the app they pray. This goes on until one of them gets it, which surprisingly doesn't last as long as you'd think. These games never fail to put a smile on all our faces and get us all back in a good mood after the stress and chaos of prepping the meal.

Prayer is important, God is good, and Life with Kids is crazy!

Love,
Ang

Monday, June 2, 2014

School's Out for Summer!

I do get excited when school gets out... less schedule, less rush in the morning and more fun activities and time with the kids! That also means more mess, more arguing and more "mom I'm hungry" even though I just finished cleaning up from breakfast! I am such a slow learner, but after plenty of past summers and mommy-melt-downs we are approaching this summer with a new PLAN

Our Daily SUMMER Schedule: 
  • 7am: Eat Breakfast/Read Scriptures/Do Chores (we've added some extras for the summer which I'll blog about later)
  • 9am: Activities and play time
  • 11am: Lunch and more Chores
  •  12-2pm: QUIET TIME!!! This means no one gets to talk to mom :)
  • 4pm: Chores and Dinner
  • 6pm: Journals/Reading then Bed
In addition to the schedule we laid down some ground rules to help our summer be better. 
  • No TV (I didn't want Netflix sucking all their brains away all summer long)
  • No video games/screen time until 2pm
  • Only 1 hour electronics, w 10 min bonus or practicing piano
A week and a half down and so far success! The house is staying clean, the kids are having to be creative and I'm not going crazy (yet). Seriously, that 2 hour block of quiet time is my sanity! 
 
We hope to make it to the beach a few times this summer and can't wait to have friends/family come to visit (hint hint). We are loving swimming and parks and barbecues with friends and if you haven't checked out kidsbowlfree.com then you must! Our whole family can bowl 2 games for $11.... seriously fun and perfect on those stormy days. 
 
I have no clue what to do about friend play dates?!? We don't have many kids on our street, so if we want play dates we have to make special arrangements but what do I do? If one kid gets a friend over all of them want one or they hug each other?! Advice?!?


Thanks for looking and enjoy your summer!
Love,
Ang