Spring Break

Spring break was fun. We did a whole lot of nothing. The kids all had someone to play with at least once. We went to the science centre (ie. made some use out of the various passes I've paid for). I read a couple of books. Watch some TV. Played Wii. We did some shopping for new clothes - in fact the boys got some new shorts which seemed like a good idea last week, but since buying them it's been snowing non-stop! I know, the bad weather is my fault for getting too excited for spring!

Now the kids are back in school again, and the morning didn't go as bad as I thought it might. It's a lot quieter around here today - but I miss having the big kids around.

Here's a few items to catch everyone up on what's been going on here:

1. Guitar Hero - I just beat the devil on medium and moved up to hard. And I suck. I got booed off on every song I tried. I may need to practise. Or quit.

2. New niece - My brother David and his wife Kathryn had a baby on Sat. They named her Eve. That brings the Babowal total of (living) grandchildren to 7 boys, 6 non-boys (either the blog or my parent-controls is blocking me from putting in the obvious word here that starts with g and ends in irl). Congrats to D&K. She was about 10 days late, so we were all eagerly waiting her arrival - Kathryn most of all. I can't wait to get up to Edmonton to see her in person. Dave now has 3 little s.

3. We attended a ward activity! Actually it was the High Priest's social - and it was really fun. Normally we skip all church activities. There is no reason for this. We used to attend all the time. Now we've become old and boring and it always seems like a better idea to stay home in our PJ's watching TV. How lame are we?? But it was fun to be out and chatting with people. As you can imagine, it was hard to make James stop chatting so we could finally leave the party.

Another note about spring break - and all school breaks. When we are on a school schedule, we are very diligent about daily family scripture study and family prayer. When we don't have schedule we are very sporadic. For instance, we didn't read scriptures or have family prayer all week. How bad.

One final thought: personal scripture study for the kids. I'm very good at micromanaging my kids when it comes to homework, chores,and piano practising. In fact, I may need to lay off a bit. But I'm quite lax when it comes to ensuring they are reading their scriptures alone. Really, I should make that my #1 priority when it comes to them. It will be way more beneficial to them to have testimonies in their life than to complete a Gr.6 science project or be able to play "Fur Elise" on the piano. For some reason though, even though that really is what I know to be true, I still can't seem to get my actions in line with this thought. The problem lies in the fact that I'm not willing to give up on diligently watching over those other items to ensure their scripture study. Instead I need to add scriptures to the list of things I manage in their lives. But this is overwhelming! So either I need to suck it up and do one more thing, or, conversely, let go of one thing and trust that they can do it on their own (Which I'm sure they can). Also, the way things are now is that they read their scriptures at bedtime - when I'm so focussed on getting them to bed and relaxing. So I think if I have them read earlier than bedtime I will pay more attention to their reading.

One really final thought on all of this: years ago a friend (who had teenagers at the time) told me how their stake president had challenged parents to spend 5 minutes a night with each child reading scriptures one-on-one. She said it was hard to do at first, but made such a big change in their relationships. I think I'm going to start trying this. I know already that this will work better for me if each kid joins me in my room before bed one at a time instead of me going to their rooms. Maybe that's lazy, but I'm willing to give this a shot!