Family Motto and Snowflake Service

I am a compulsive list maker. I will make the same list over and over to just get thoughts out of my mind out. One list I make over and over are values and morals that I want to teach my children. After thought and prayer, my husband and I decided that our family motto this year is the scripture Matthew 25:40, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

One time each month, we will have a special evening where we focus on serving another person or family. We barnstormed as a family a few ideas for the first three months of the year. I do better when I am organized, so I made this easy to use spreadsheet.

Click on the picture below to download the PDF.

For January, we decided to make sugar cookies and deliver them to a special family which included Logan's little friend.

Logan LOVED delivering his little cookies and hopefully we filled a little man's heart and stomach.

Now just to get Logan to understand that picking up after himself is a "service" to his mother!

A few people we thought of serving... neighbors, post man, garbage man (Logan says he loves them... they are pretty awesome men,) store cashiers, someone walking down the street, teachers, and everybody! The possibilites are endless!

Boo...tiful Service

This month, our little family has been discussing service. I am trying to teach my children different ways they can show service. We recently had an evening where we painted pumpkins and discussed who and how we can serve this month.

In the spirit of Halloween, I created this little page to hang on our refrigerator to remind us of what our service goals are this month. I am all about visual reminders! (Must be why I love Pinterest so much!)

I love to watch the excitement on my son's face as he follows through on some of our "service" ideas. Hugs and kisses are freely given in our household!

 Happy first of the week!

My New Plan: Virtues!

A few months ago, I sat down and wrote a list of what qualities I imagined my adult children would possess. I pondered what was most important to me as a mother to teach my children. Of course, I want them to do well in school, explore their talents, and have a wonderful childhood, but even more importantly, I want my children to possess values such as integrity, charity, empathy, responsibility, and a hard worth ethic. After teaching high school students for many years, I have discovered that these morals must be taught and they must be taught by parents.

I am very excited to start teaching my children these values, line upon line, precept upon precept. Every Monday evening, we hold what is called a Family Home Evening. It is a time that we learn together (and have lots of fun!) as a family. Each month, I am going to focus on one value and create two weeks of lessons in addition to weekly activities to reinforce the value. I am so excited to share!

To reinforce all that we are learning, as well as a way to create our family moto, I bought a frame from Michaels. As we learn and discuss our virtues, I cut out vinyl on my Silhouette or Cricut and rub it on to the glass. I am trying to achieve  a Wordle look. Eventually this frame will be covered with awesome words!

This month we are learning about honesty. We have previously discussed sharing. The word try comes from me needing to always remind my little guy that he must try instead of always saying he can't do it and asking for mom to do it. I swear one day he will be independent!!!

I will post week one's activities shortly.

Upcoming values we are going to learn about are:

• courage
• dependability
• kindness
• forgiveness
• love
• unselfishness
• respect
• self-reliance
• And many more!