Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Blessing a Day 2009- 23 from yesterday

I am thankful for family nights-
I am thankful that we have a time set aside to spend time together. I used to think that every night was family night. You know when the kids were really little. But now as our family has changed with more children and different schedules, and other things we have going on, I can appreciate the counsel to set aside time to spend together as a family. I enjoy that it is not my responsibility to plan the evening. I am glad we have a little book to refer to of who is in charge of what. I am glad that I am not always the one in charge of lesson. I am thankful that everyone gets a chance to do everything. I am thankful for the time to be together.

2 comments:

Kristie said...

I struggle with this. It is rare that we have a night that all three kids are free. But what makes it hard is that when we do, inevitably, one of them either wants to invite a friend over, or gets invited to a friend's house. I struggle with being the fun-sucker who won't let her kids be with their friends, but instead insists on family time that they usually wind up being annoyed about. Last Friday I rented movies and ordered pizza, only for one of the kids to be gone (to the FLC, remember?) So I tried again the next night, only for one of the kids to have a friend invite them to spend the night ....

I want them to enjoy being with friends, but I also want our time alone, just the five of us, to be a priority. Really, a hard balance for me. How can I be annoyed that my kids are blessed with friends who want to spend time with them, and how can my kids be annoyed to have a mom who would just like a little time with just us?? :)

Alisa said...

Kristie- we struggle too. It is a hard balance. If we say yes to one thing then we are saying no to something else. I say that all the time.
Monday night is the only night that nothing is scheduled for church responsibilities for any of us. Even Sundays are busy with service and sacrifice in some form, and often that means our family is not together. A few years ago we had something on Monday nights for one of the kids and finally decided that by a certain time on Monday nights we all needed to be available. On the very rare occasion that someone has something that night we still try and attend it together. I know some families pick another night for an hour or two that works. Something that helped us was putting it on the calendar. Setting aside some time that everyone knew about. We slip up, things happen but for the majority of the time we hold fast to the Monday night is family night.
Now all that saying- sometimes our family nights feel like one big FAIL! Crying, arguing overall grumpiness, we-can't-even-get-through-the-prayer, eye rolling, etc, etc. But our hope that by sticking with it, over time- and it may be a looong time, is that we will be close and be able to know that we can count on one another.
Don't give up- keep working on carving out some family time.