Secret Service Handshake FHE

I love this girl. She loves to wear dresses and suck her thumb...and wear the nightgown that I made for her for Christmas and snuggle.  Makes me so happy.  She also loves drawing pictures of our family and jumping off of high places while saying "I'm flying!" on the way down.

And this girl.  I love her too, lots and lots.  She is is precocious and silly and spunky and loves to be the "little mama".  She is learning to cook and loves to care for others.  Last night she baked cookies for our FHE treat in her Easy Bake oven.  We all enjoyed it while taking tiny bites.  They were the size of a quarter!  :)

And this one...what a character.  The other night he read the entire book "The Best Nest" to us.  After each page he jumped up and down with excitement.  His goal is to earn money to buy more Legos this year.  During quiet time at school he drew a poster of Angry Birds and informed me that he plans on selling them to his classmates to earn extra cash, but that I need to contact the company that makes Angry Birds and get their permission to do so.  Wise and enterprising. 

Oh and can't forget this one.  The Renaissance Man:  bikes, bakes, fishes, fixes, reads, travels. The glue that holds us all together.

Together, we are...the ThunderCats!  NO not really, I just felt like saying that.  But when I look at each member of our family and recognize them for their amazing super powers, it inspires me to find more effective ways to help each one of them "fly" in their respective areas of interest and talent.  (When was the last time that you sat down and spelled out in detail the special talents and contributions of each member of your family?)

During Family Home Evening last night, we talked about Captain Moroni and how he wrote down the things that were important on a banner so that others would remember what they were working toward/fighting for.

After reviewing our personal and family goals for the year which we keep recorded in a family goals journal, I asked the kids to come up with a phrase that would help us to remember our family's goal for the year: "Serve Others" is the oh-so clever phrase they came up with! :)

Then the kids decided to invent a secret family handshake that coincides with our goal to "serve others."  That way we can have a cool little secret service "club" that is just for our family. ;)  It's fun to have things as a family that are all our own!

FHE ended with about an hour until bedtime.  Since Steve is out of town, we decided to chill out together in the living room just doing whatever we felt like doing.  Autumn colored.  Scarlett played computer games on the Friend website.  Guy worked on his Angry Birds poster.  And I practiced playing the new Primary song on the piano.  It was real nice and down-homey feeling to just hang out together like that.  Very relaxing.

As you might be starting to realize...I don't try to get too fancy during FHE.  Having fun together, making memories, reading some scriptures, and leaving with a good feeling in our hearts for one another is one of my main goals for our time together in FHE.  And we certainly did that last night.

Please check out my pal Catania's Family's experience in FHE too today...
they discussed the sacredness of homes and temples!