Family night and a bit of a potty mouth

A couple of weeks ago I realized that we had not dedicated our home.  It gave me an idea to focus our next couple of FHEs on preparing ourselves, and our home to be dedicated.  I decided to do this in Phases.

WEEK 1 Cleaning (The kids love it when we clean for family night!) 

Instead of pulling out the old whip to get the kids moving, we started by discussing and reading this scripture together:

"Organize yourselves.  Prepare every needful thing and establish a house.  Even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God."

I asked them to look around their rooms (which were particularly messy) and said, "Do you think a Queen would live in a place like this?"  Of course they laughed and said "No way!"  Then I asked if they thought God would like to live in a place like this.  Again, they concluded that he would not.  I then proceeded to explain that because they are children of God, they can be Queens someday. I told them they deserved more than to live in such a mess.  They were worth much more to their Heavenly Father and he wanted the best for them. 
Before we started cleaning, we said a prayer.  Unlike most of our cleaning adventures, I really felt the Spirit and I think that they did too.  We then spent the next couple of hours cleaning and organizing their rooms until they were perfect.  I kept reminding them that we were trying to get their room ready to feel like the temple.  One funny (but true) line I kept asking as we washed their walls was, "Girls, do you think there are boogies all over the temple walls?....get a tissue!)  Other then that, I was pretty patient with them. :-)

WEEK 2 Memorizing
The next week we didn't have tons of time for FHE.  I decided to have the kids memorize the scripture we had read together the previous week.  We all sat in a circle, and I assigned each of the girls a line from the scripture.  They had to come up with some sort of action to go along with their line. 

We all started by saying the first line together (and yes we started to sound like a scary cult, but it was funny and it worked.)...Organize yourselves.  Prepare every needful thing and establish a house,......
Then Ellie folded her arms and said, "Even a house of prayer"
I rubbed my stomach and said, "A house of fasting"
Mike raised his hands to heaven and said, " A house of faith"
Casie made a book with her hands and said in a nerdy voice, "A house of learning"
Annie punched her arm pits (??...we gave no rules on what the sign had to be) and said "A house of Glory"
Then Jack was supposed to say "A house of order" but he just ran around playing, so we just knew where he was supposed to say it and pretended to organize something for our sign.
Then we all stood up and raised our hands to the sky and said, "A house of God!"  Then we all brought our hands down and bowed our heads solemnly. It was funny and corny. 
We then mixed up our circle. The action and line stayed with the place, but we all sat somewhere different each time.  We kept doing this until all the kids had the scripture memorized.  Each of us stood up at the end and recited the entire scripture by ourselves.  
The kids really liked it and we now all know a scripture that will hopefully remind our family of how we want our home to be.

Week  3 Visiting the Temple
This was our FHE last night.  It didn't turn out as well as I wanted it to because it was cold.  We brought our journals to the Temple and wrote down how we felt while we were on the temple grounds and how each person thought we could make our home feel more like the temple.  Like I said, it was cold, so we really just walked around, wrote a sentence, and ran back to the car.  Maybe it would have been better a little earlier.  Oh well, it was still nice. 

Here is the potty mouth part......
On the way home from the temple I asked the kids to recite the scripture they had learned the previous week.  After they got done, we heard Jacks little voice say, "A house of tooting...." 
We laughed our heads off. 

So this next Monday is the big day!  We are going to get dressed in our church clothes and have a special dedication service. I assigned each of the girls a topic to talk about.  Then Mike will say the prayer, and I will unveil a big surprise!  Hopefully it all turns out the way I hope it will.  And I hope we can all start to feel heaven a little more in our home.