❤ ❤ ❤

Okay, so I thought I would really think ‘outside the box’ for home evening tonight. Do something different. whatever. My kids used to love home evening. I remember Thorin coming up to me on random days of the week asking if we could have home evening tonight. I used to think, naively, that they loved the spirit we had in our home during home evening. Although that may be true, I think it was more the fact that we never, or very rarely, had sweets in our house except for refreshments at home evening. Good reason to serve them!

As my kids have gotten older, the excitement around home evening, and snacks, has waned a bit. It is sad. Now I have to drag them there and almost always end up either talking in a somewhat raised voice, or really having to fight the urge to throw something through the front window. I have to really try to notice the good things like….they may be acting like idiots, but they are doing it ‘together’, or…they may not be listening to a word I’m saying but they aren’t watching tv….or they may be making fun of each other but at least they are smiling…..Really, we have to focus on the good stuff.

Tonight I gave all the kids the 5 love language test for kids. For those of you that have no idea what I am talking about, google it. It is a book by Dr Chapman where he explains that we all have a ‘love language.’ something that makes us feel loved. Whether it is physical touch, words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time, or gifts. If we don’t get love shown to us in the way we need it, we are depleted and our ‘love tanks’ are lacking. It is a very elementary concept that is fun to learn. I thought it would be fun to see what language my kids ‘spoke’ and to share mine with them.

We all did the test and then took turns guessing what each others language was. We were right for some and wrong for others. I challenged the kids to pay attention to how they treated each other and to try and speak the language of love that they each heard or needed. I am interested to see if anything comes from it. The kids were fairly cooperative, except for Jared who was so afraid he would score high on physical touch he tried to rig the whole thing with some complicated ‘strategy’ that made me want to wring his neck. He is such a funny guy…sheesh.  The good news is that nobody cried, nobody hit anyone else, Fantine got some attention, we went for ice cream after and ….well….we did it. And that is really the whole point, isn’t it? Just DOING it? I hope so, I’m counting on those points on my grand tally sheet. I’m hoping for at least a C, if only for effort……cause I said so.