This year we tried laying out snacks and when they heard a certain word, they could eat the snack that was assigned to that word. It worked really well for the first session!
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| This could be an advertisement for our church!!! |
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| There they are, listening to President Nelson! |
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| I love that Craig bothered to take an artsy shot of the snacks! |
So that was a big deal! But of course, they also emphasized how the purpose of this change was so that families could have more time to teach their children the gospel in the home, rather than it happening at church. So as much as I wanted to do a happy dance, I also felt a tremendous responsibility with the whole change, too. So it was nice that as I contemplated being a more involved parent, my kids were actually being very good right at that moment, and I felt like it just might be possible.
I guess we'll see!
But hey-- two hour church! Who would have guessed?
Later on, my kids were behaving more like this:
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| Ryder has given himself antennae. And a goatee? |
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| This is how Camille chooses to watch conference. It looks very awkward for Craig... |
During Women's Session of conference, President Nelson challenged the women to take a 10-day break from social media or media that we felt was not a positive influence in our lives. This was perfect timing because I had spent the last two weeks following the Supreme Court stuff OBSESSIVELY. I had several different news sources (trying to not just stay in my bubble!) that I would check in on, and then when they didn't have anything new, I would branch out to other places. Craig would come home and I would have to word vomit all about it for an hour.
I knew what I was doing probably wasn't very healthy (and it's not like I was going to be asked to vote on the final decision) so I'd been telling myself that once it was all over I should take a break from the news for a bit. Well, now a prophet asked me to do the same!
I went home and told Craig all about it and he got even more gung-ho than I was, and decided our whole family should take a ten-day break from screens. This seemed a little extreme to me (HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO GET MY DAILY NAP IF THE KIDS AREN'T WATCHING TV????) but in a spirit of supportiveness, I agreed to do it.
So today is Day 4 of no television and not much internet. (Obviously some internet is allowed or else I couldn't be blogging about it right now.) I'm staying away from my news feeds. The kids are off YouTube. And it's been interesting. The first day there was some crying, mostly from Camille. Maybe a little from me. But everyone has gotten used to it pretty quickly.
Last night we got so much rain from the tail end of Hurricane Michael that all after-school activities were canceled. This meant that Craig got to come home early STAY HOME-- a rare thing! And best of luck, I'd made a really good dinner, too, so that alone would have been pretty fabulous. But then we decided to play games as a family, something we haven't done much of. First it was Twister:
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| I mostly love Ryder smiling in the background... |
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| ...And then laughing uproariously here! |
And then later, Camille decided to drape herself over Bentley. Notice he's giving me the thumbs up-- he wouldn't put up with this from Ryder, that's for sure!
We played a round of Go Fish (which is way more fun with seven people than with two!) and then everyone ate cookies (which I'd made the night before instead of watching tv-- this "media fast" is bad for my waistline!) and then we sent the little kids to bed so we could play Code Names with the big kids.
It was an absolutely wonderful night, I went to bed so happy.
1 comment:
The whole Kavanaugh thing was just way too painful for me, so I kept my distance early on. I knew it'd get pushed through no matter what (after all, no one cared about Trump's accusers or even his brazen boasting about assault), so I wasn't going to do myself any good reliving my own trauma for days on end. We have times, especially with Mal, where we enforce no screens for several days or weeks. We try to be judicious about it all the time, but sometimes he just needs a break. Like you found, we often have tears and battles for a day or two and then over time it becomes less of a big deal. Sometimes we end up with more fights between the kids, but most of the time they eventually start coming up with fun things to do, like fort building, that don't involve the screen, and then it very much feels worth it!
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