Memory Keeping

Recording our Memories is such an important commandment.  We have been asked to keep records since the beginning of time.

Our family has a new fun way to record our memories. 

We have 4 children, but only one that can read and write.  This is our way to record our history.

Here is what we are doing:

I found this cute little file box.  I put an index card in there for every day of the year.

Each night at dinner time, we write something on our card.

ie: January 24th:  Today we blessed Tessa.

Then next year on January 24th, we will read the card and add to it.

If we miss an evening, we do it at breakfast or lunch for the previous day.

This is so simple, but a great way to record the everyday happenings.

It also teaches our children the importance of record keeping.

How to help little ones contribute to their home and family:

Well, there are a lot of ways. I just wanted to share one.

The ModEco chore chart

I thought it was really cute. It's a pdf and you can type in the information you want to add. That means you get to decide what chores you want to and if you want to start your week on Monday or Sunday. I stuck the two that I made into an 8.5x11 frame (diploma frame) and I use a dry erase marker to update the dates and check off chores. For now they are excited about it.

Preach My Gospel FHE Lesson - How sweet is repentance!

I am working now to update the archive of our FHE lessons on Preach My Gospel. Visit the post here to access the ones that are done.

 

Tonight's lesson will be on Preach My Gospel Lesson 3, Heading 3  "Repentance."

 

This lesson uses the beautiful, powerful story from the Book of Mormon about the Lamanites who repented and buried their weapons. I love this story!

It also teaches about the bitter feelings of remorse and guilt we have when we sin, using chocolate (unsweetened and regular) to help your family compare those feelings to the sweet, peaceful feelings of being forgiven.

How everlastingly grateful I am for the Atonement of Jesus Christ! How overwhelmingly amazed I am that He would choose to feel those bitter, awful pangs of sin so that I can repent! I know He did this because He loves us. He is our Redeemer and our Savior.

Preparing this lesson was a joy and a reminder to me to repent more often. It is already paid for, and infinitely worth it!

Link to Lesson 3 Heading 3 pdf  ~ "Sweet Repentance"

Preach My Gospel FHE Lessons Archive

update 4/9/13: Because Scribd is making life difficult now, I have uploaded all of these to google docs as pdf's, and have changed the links accordingly. Hopefully google stuff will always be free. . . :)

I thought it would be helpful to gather all of these into one post, especially since I haven't managed to be regular about posting them!

-- Here's a link to my original post about why we started using these for FHE lessons and my feelings about using Preach My Gospel to teach my children. --

I will update this post with the new links whenever I post a new lesson. We have a bunch more done, just not uploaded and linked yet. Here's what we have so far. . . .

Note: We take turns preparing the lessons for Family Home Evening, so there is a wide variety in lesson style for these! If it's one I prepared it tends to be more elaborate. If it's one my 10-year-old son prepared, it tends to be very simple. :)



 Preach My Gospel
Lesson 1 - The Message of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ

Heading 1 "God is Our Loving Heavenly Father"
Heading 2 "The Gospel Blesses Families"
Heading 3 "Heavenly Father Reveals His Gospel in Every Dispensation"
Heading 4 "The Savior's Earthly Ministry"
Heading 5 "The Great Apostasy"
Heading 6 "The Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through Joseph Smith"
Heading 7 "The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ"
Heading 8 "Pray to Know the Truth through the Holy Ghost"

Lesson 2 - The Plan of Salvation

Heading 1 "Pre-Earth Life: God's Purpose and Plan for Us"
Heading 2 "The Creation"
Heading 3 "Agency and the Fall of Adam and Eve"
Heading 4 "Our Life on Earth"
Heading 5 "The Atonement"
Heading 6 "The Spirit World"
Heading 7 "The Resurrection, Judgment, and Immortality"
Heading 8 "Kingdoms of Glory"

Lesson 3 - The Gospel of Jesus Christ


Heading 1 "Through Christ We Can Be Cleansed From Sin"
Heading 2 "Faith in Jesus Christ"
Heading 3 "Repentance"
Heading 4 "Baptism, Our First Covenant"
Heading 5 "The Gift of the Holy Ghost"
Heading 6 "Endure to the End"


Lesson 4 - The Commandments

Part 1 "Obedience"
Part 2 "Pray Often"
Part 3 "Study the Scriptures"
Part 4 "Keep the Sabbath Day Holy"

Using "a carrot and a stick" in teaching your kids to Be Nice

Or rather, "beans and rice".

This is another gem from my very own parents (see Super Kid post).

Do you ever feel like you are always asking your kids to do the same exact things? (put away your shoes, put away your backpack, put away your dirty socks, etc.) Or NOT to do the same exact things?! (please stop chewing with your mouth open, please stop provoking your brother, please stop singing the Thomas song, etc.) Can you tell I have all boys? :)

Do you ever feel sad that your sons don't open the door for you? Or that no one appreciates the okra stew you spent two hours making?

Do you ever wish that you could ask your children to do/not to do something without that sound of barely subdued rage in your voice?

Well, I do. (I actually don't make okra stew, though. That sounds faintly disgusting.)

Mom and Dad also got fed up with this type of repetitiveness in parenting, and devised the following method.

 

1. Get a bowl of beans (dry pinto beans) and a bowl of white rice

2. Get cute little containers, one for each of your children who are old enough to be expected to obey, and label them with their names.

3. Explain to your little sweethearts that there is a new game you'll be playing every day. And there will be a prize at the end of each day.

4. "Here are the rules: When you do something nice, I will give you a bean. When I ask you to do something and you cheerfully do it, I will give you a bean. When you do something REALLY nice without my asking (like hold the door open for me when I'm Primary President and trying desperately to carry armloads of handouts and my scriptures and your "reverence" stuff into the church without letting your little brother escape back to the parking lot), you get MORE, like maybe even FIVE BEANS.

"When you do something naughty, I give you a rice. When you disobey, I give you a rice (think: then make sure you obey! :).

"For each rice you have, you will lose two of your beans when we count them."

5. At the end of the day (I usually do this after supper, when they're still at the table), I bring over the cute little containers, and we tally up the scores. For each bean, I give the little sweethearts an MnM or a chocolate chip. Some days they don't get any! But usually they get probably around 15-20.

Another way of rewarding with the beans is to let them save up for something. Like, "when you have 50 beans, I'll take you to DQ for a dilly bar." (Or if you prefer something more healthy, "when you have 50 beans, I'll make you your very own pot of okra stew.")

Anyway. It's a great system! Our boys have started racing to the door to open it for me (good thing there are two sets into the church!) :)

Tweak this any way you would like. . . .whatever works in your family! It's nice to have a ready reward and a ready consequence even for the little things.

Thanks to Wikimedia Commons  for the pix, except the "bean and rice cart" one is my very own.

Spotlight - Laura Vanderbeek

Since Krysta is just getting back into the swing of things after hurricane Ike, they asked me to go next. So here we go!

I've lived in Tacoma, Washington; Enterprise, New Brockton, and Ft. Rucker, Alabama; Fairbanks and Anchorage, Alaska; El Paso, Texas; Albrook AFB and Ft. Amador, Panama; Rexburg, Idaho; Lexington Park, Bowie, New Carrolton, Silver Spring, and Kensington, Maryland; Dugway Proving Grounds, Hyrum, Logan, and Providence, Utah. Yep, I was an Army brat.

I served in the Washington D.C. North Mission from '97-'99 and fell in love with the East Coast. I had 16 companions -several three-ships (my own term for 2 comps instead of 1). The photo of me below is with my last two comps was taken on my last day in the field, at transfers. I'm the short one!


I currently live in a house in the middle of a wheat field - the photo below was taken from my backyard.



I am a work at home mom. My husband is an amazing photographer and even after he stopped working at a studio in town to become a Certified Financial Planner with Keystone Wealth Management, he still got calls. So we started a little side business that has now become my business. We have a studio in our new house, under our garage. I love wedding photojournalism, photographing newborn babies, and pregnant bellies. My husband does all the rest of the portraiture. Needless to say, we keep things pretty calm around here. We never photograph on Sundays or Mondays and we try to only photograph the last hour before the sun goes down. We charge almost double for Saturdays so that helps keep our weekends free. We limit the number of weddings we photograph to 2 a month. I work on retouching photos during nap time and for a few minutes after my kids go to bed if I need to. I have a Photography BlogI love photography, but I love a lot of other things too!



Speaking of other things I love, I love my family. I love my husband. We met because of a photo. He saw my missionary plaque in the hall at church after he returned from the Germany, Dusseldorf mission. He was in the other ward but decided to attend my ward one Sunday to hear mission homecoming talk. He introduced himself to me on the stand right after Sacrament meeting was over. 6 months later we were married in the Bountiful Temple. That was 9 years ago.



I am a mother of two. My daughter is 6 and my son is 2. My daughter really changed the way I felt about children and about hugs. When I got married I thought I would have my first child to fulfill my duty and a second child because I didn't want an 'only' child. I just wasn't sure what to do after that. Well, I fell in love with my children and they have changed my life forever. Now, I will not say it's easy, but I feel it is worth it to dedicate myself to them. I'm learning a lot about children and I believe they will be my greatest investment, hands down. I've come a long way! And I still have a very long way to go. My daughter is in first grade and loves it! My son loves all the 'one on one time' he is getting now. We work on all kinds of little projects together. We love going Jeeping and 4-wheeling up in the Mountains. We especially love going camping as a family. In the winter we love to go tubing across the street in Grandma's backyard. One day I hope to go skiing again and teach my children too - it's been 7 years - and I used to have season passes!

Now, the reason I wanted Krysta to go first was because I know this is a Spotlight - heavy on the light. And well, what I want to talk about for a little bit is maybe a little too heavy. So I hope that you will forgive me but I feel it is worth talking about. When I was pregnant with my second child, I started having some serious problems. I was itching so severely that only ice water and scratching my skin off my legs would help. I spent a lot of time in ice baths. My Dr. induced me 4 weeks early hoping whatever was causing the severe itching would go away. I had a perfect baby boy but things only got worse. I knew something was seriously wrong and the Spirit whispered to me that it would be a difficult road but that I would be okay. 4 weeks later, just a few days after the actual due date I was diagnosed by my dermatologist with Hodgkins Lymphoma, cancer of the lymphnodes.

The problem with being young is that they think cancer is an old person's disease and usually diagnosis comes late in the game. It took 4 doctors and 2 specialists before I was diagnosed. I was stage 2b, meaning that it was in several lymphnodes. But my tumors were 3 inches wide and went from the bottom center of my chest cavity, up around my heart and between my lungs all the way to my collar bone. My heart was being crushed. Needless to say, we are very lucky that my son is here and we are both alive.

We then went on quite the journey - a biopsy between my heart and lungs, a bone marrow biopsy in my hip, 6 months of chemo, and 5 weeks of radiation. I started a personal blog to share my progress with anyone who wanted to know how I was doing. It's been 19 months since I completed treatment and I am still in remission. I can honestly say that more good came from having cancer than bad. It helped me see things in a better perspective. I learned that Heavenly Father loves me personally and that I truly and a daughter of God. It taught me about service. It taught me more about Heavenly Father's Plan. It taught me to give other's the benefit of the doubt (especially while driving)- you just never know what is really going on in someone else's life. It taught me the true value of my family. I could go on and on, but I can do that later. Losing my hair was really hard - here is a funny take on how things have changed.




I have many goals in life, but the two that are the most important to me are to raise my children the best I can with my Heavenly Father's help and to work as hard as I can along side my dear husband so that we can get become full time missionaries again as soon as possible. It's really nice to think long-term again. And after meeting all those missionaries in Nauvoo this summer, I really have the bug! Anyway, thanks for letting me share a little of my life with you. I am really looking forward to getting to know the rest of the girls here and all of those who comment.

Teaching Moments

I'm the oldest of six with just one brother. When I found out that my first baby was going to be a boy, I thought, "What do I do with a boy?"

Three boys (and one beautiful daughter) later I'm learning all the wonderful mysteries that are a part of the Y chromosome. As my boys get older, I find the quantity for "quality" time depleting.

I'm so grateful for something I'm experiencing with my 8 year old and it is a blessing of being a member of the church. Yesterday he told me he was hungry and I made a few suggestions of healthy snacks he could make himself (I was getting ready for church). When I walked into the kitchen he showed me a few concoctions he created not only for himself but for his younger brother. Then when we arrived home from church, starving of course, he found a child's size apron and went to work creating all kinds of things and even delivered a few to the neighbors. I kept thinking, there has got to be a way I can take this enthusiasm, channel it, and make a real teaching moment out of it. Then, what I know was the Spirit prompting me, I remembered his scouting book and asked him to get it out. To our excitement, there is a "Cooking and Eating" requirement. I was able to sit down and show him the Food Pyramid and teach him about planning healthy meals. Then he and I planned tonight's dinner that he will get to make. He even wrote the shopping list for me! I'm so excited to have his help in the kitchen tonight and we get to pass off something for Cub Scouts.

I'm so grateful to have that program. I'm lucky to get a "Hi, Mom!" when he gets home from school each day before he runs out the door to ride bikes, find friends and do whatever boys do outside. I don't know if he is as excited about tonight's dinner as I am. I know these moments will come and go faster than what I am prepared for. I know the church's support of the Scouting program is inspired and put in place for an important purpose. For our family and for now, it is so we can carve out that time to spend one on one time together, for a mom to teach her child, and for a child to learn independence and gain confidence.

By the way, we are having Crunchy Chicken Toes, sliced oranges and lettuce wedges for dinner tonight.