Family Home Evening

Mondays are always fun, mostly in the surprise-type way because you just never know how Family Home Evening is going to turn out. Here's an example of one of ours:
First of all, the girls LOVE to conduct. Rylee always takes out her Book of Mormon and has a spiritual "thought" prepared. She'll open them up and tell us all about Abinadi or Nephi. Today she picked Madison to say the opening prayer (they only pick each other!) and it's always a huge surprise when Madison says a prayer. Sometimes we sit there for 10 seconds with our heads bowed and arms crossed waiting for words and when we look up, we see Madison deep in thought saying a prayer in her head. Jared taught them to do that if they need to say a prayer in a public place (and sometimes for personal prayers). So now she'll spring these silent prayers on us during dinner, FHE, and just about any other time. It's so funny! When we finally convince her to say it out loud, I'm always the first to be blessed. "Bless mommy to be happy. Bless her to be kind and to have fun." I'm lucky I get blessed so much!
After the prayer, our Family Business only takes a few moments--mostly just the parents preping the kids for events during the week. If Jared has the lesson, he tries in vain to keep the kids' attention the entire time. Today we were looking up scriptures about prayer. Everyone had their own scriptures out. Jared tried to whisper a scripture to Madison to say, but she wouldn't have it. She wanted to read her own. So she read one all about how you close your eyes when you pray. Rylee then proceeded to tell us the in-depth story of how Jesus put forth his finger and touched the stones to light the ships on their way to the promise land.
This is when Jared tries to reign in the lesson back to its first intentions. Jackson's eating his Book of Mormon and Rylee is using her outside voice. Madison is trying to see how many ways you can sit on a stool in 30 seconds and Jared's still trudging through the lesson.
The song we ALWAYS sing is "I love Daddy Yessiree" (who DOESN'T love daddy?) to which the girls belt out with true conviction. Madison spends a few minutes "hmmmmm, uhhhhh, hm. Well, hhmmmmm. I pick Wywee (rylee) to say the prayer." Rylee spends a few minutes animatedly pouring her heart out in humility and whala! Family Home Evening is a success! I wish you could join us, but maybe this gives you a little window into our home on Monday nights!