We had a blast for our FTN this week!  We were lucky enough to aquire a HUGE roll of butcher type paper.  When it was offered to me I thought “What in the world would I do with that?”  Turns out it was perfect for tracing our bodies and from that I threw together a little lesson on our bodies and how we need to feed them the right food, give them adequate amounts of exercise, and also the right amount of sleep.  My boys loved it!  After the boys traced each one of us we let them draw on our clothes and hair.  Apparently I have awesome spikey hair.  I’ll admit, my hair can be a little frizzy, but spikey, really?  And H’s seems to think his skin is blue.  When we asked him about it he said he was swimming.  Have you ever heard the quote that says “A family that plays together stays together”?  Well I think we accomplished a bit of that.  It was a lot of fun to take time out of our stressful week to giggle with the boys and just enjoy each other.  Try it, really.  I bet you’ll get the giggles together too.

Have you ever been playing a game with your kids who bend the rules in order to win?  What happens when you call them out on their “cheating”?  Please tell me I am not the only one who has kids that don’t like it ONE. BIT.  

Competition is an every day occurance in our home.  We compete to see who can eat their food the fastest, who can clean up the toys the fastest, who can get their seatbelts on the fastest.  You name, and we probably make it a competition.  It works for us.  Unfortunately, I have witnessed a few minor blow up because of this.  

It is so important to teach our children to be good sports.  Whenever there is a winner, there is also a loser.  For our FTN this week we decided the best way to encourage our boys to be good sports was to get them in the middle of a competition.  Can you say….BOWLING!?  Is that not just the most fun sport ever.  There is something about wearing shoes like this…

and and an atmosphere like this…

that makes me slightly giddy.  

After the game (we were awful) we talked to the boys about winning and loosing.  We taught them that it is ok to lose and when we do we still need to put a smile on our faces and tell the winners good job.  We also taught them that losing just gives us the chances to come out and try harder next time.  

The boys took the lesson surprisingly well.  Yesterday we were at a BBQ with a bunch of friends and while the adults chatted, the children were playing soccer (the best ever..next to bowling!).  J got the ball stolen from him and was starting to get pretty mad.  H put his hand on J’s shoulder and said “you have to be a good sport J”.  My heart twittered.  I was so proud of H for remembering and making sure that his little brother remembered too.

We are FINALLY getting back into the routine of life after having a new baby.  That means, tonight was FTN.  My boys were totally looking forward to what we had planned. I love that they get so excited about it.  As we were about to get started I got a phone call from the neighbor asking if we wanted to go play on the track at the local high school.How could we pass that up?  So we changed gears and had our family training night focus on physical health.  

Gravity Matters advises us to get out and exercise DAILY.  How many of us can say we get adequate amounts of exercise.  I sure as heck can’t.  We had a blast tonight playing an intense game of soccer (sense the sarcasm) with a half time full of racing around the track. (More exercise than I have had in a good 9 months…oh sad).  The kids ALL loved it.  I needed to get my endorphins flowing too.  I may have enjoyed myself even more than the kids.  Really.   

So for a fun, easy FTN, get physical (I know you are totally hearing “Lets get physical, physical”  Did that just age me?).  There are so many things you could do; hiking, biking, a walk, basketball, volleyball, bowling, golfing, swimming, rollerbladding (I am the only one who wishes those babies would come back in style?), tennis…..the list could go on and on.  

When we got home I told the kids to get in the shower so we could go to bed.  H got really sad and said “but what about FTN?”  He was pretty excited for what we had previously planned.  At least now I don’t really have to plan something for next week.  Done and done!

We had a CA-RAZY week!  We welcomed a sweet new baby to the family and have been trying to adjust to little sleep, juggling the older children, and crazy work schedules. Needless to say, we all grew impatient with each other and sort of lost sight of how special this week should have been.  

I decided that our FTN needed to focus on serving each other.  It is so easy to grow irriatated quickly with our own family members.  We talked about how our family is going to be with us forever and how important it is to treat each other as we would our best friends. Lately, my boys have been mean to each other and me.  I completely realize that they had a HUGE week with very little stability, but their bad attitudes have to go!  So I challenged each of us to do a secret service for each member of the family sometime throughout the week.  It doesn’t have to be anything huge.  Some of the ideas we threw around were making each others beds, helping with dishes, picking up toys without being asked, getting diapers for the baby, writing little thank you notes to each other, and I am sure there were more.  My little guys were really excited and even woke up this morning reminding me of what we were all challenged to do.  

I think it is important to mention our own attitudes as adults.  I blame the grouchiness on a stressful week, but in reality, I don’t think I tried very hard to change the negative attitudes.  ”When mom’s not happy, no one is happy” is so stinking true!  To be honest, the lesson this week was more for me than anyone else in the family.  So my challenge to each of you is to be extra careful with your own attitude. Mothers seem to set the tone in the home.  I certainly have a lot of influence on it, so believe you me, I will be taking my patience to a whole new level. 

Here is a funny….

After the lesson (which lasted all of 10 minutes) my little guy asked me for some chocolate milk.  He had just had some and we were headed to bed, so I told him.  He immediately replied “That is not nice mom!”.  Uhhh…shoot.

For our FTN at the first of the year the kids, hubby, and I sat down to set some goals for the year. We each set an individual goal and then we decided on a couple of family goals together. They were totally simple little goals.  For example, our 4 year old decided he wanted to begin learning to read and the 3 year old wanted to learn the alphabet.   Our family goals included having a regular FTN and saying family prayers each night before the kids go to bed.  

So now that we are nearly 1/4th of the way through the year (yes, really!!!  Are you as shocked by the sound of that as I am?), I have decided it is time to re-evaluate our goals.  We did so stinkin’ good up until about 3 weeks ago when we went out of town. FTN’s were totally becoming a habit for us and something we all looked forward to and for some reason I am having a really hard time hopping back on the FTN bandwagon and getting it done.  So to jump start us again…we will do the re-evaluating thing.  

For those of you just starting out, what a great time to set some new goals!  It always seems easier to start goals at the beginning of something….new year, new week…but why not start some new goals now?  In the short 3 months that we were consistant about our FTN and other goals, I seriously noticed a HUMUNGO difference in the atmosphere of our home. 

Another good idea for families with older kids would be to sit down weekly as a family and discuss each persons events for the week.  Get a weekly calendar or a dry erase board and map out each day for each person.  Does that make sense?   That way there are no last minute events springing up causing stress.  We all know that the better prepared we are for things, the better it usually goes right?  Not only will you be more organized for the up coming week, but you will also be sneaking in some quality family time with no distractions (yes, you should probably turn off the tv or phones during this time). 

So have at it.  Let me know how it goes!  It really is fun to have goals that we work on as a family.  It’s much easier to stay on track when you have people that you live with and see daily encouraging you to stick with it.  Good luck!!

1 on 1 Parenting encourages families to incorporate a Family Training Night into their weekly schedule.  So that we are!  I have young kids who have LOVED doing fun activities or lessons together as a whole family.  We have set our Family Training Night to be on Monday night.   You should pick any night that is convenient for your family. 

This week we had a quick little lesson on how we need to have faith in something.  (If you have little ones, remember that their attention span isn’t huge…..at all.  Our lesson lasted maybe 3 minutes and then it was on to the activity.) We used the wonderful example of faith growing like a seed.  The more we nurture the seed (feed and water it), the more it will grow. 

And now for the fun part!  We planted seeds, and my children LOVE LOVE LOVED IT!  They filled up little plastic cups with soil, put the seed in, and have watered them daily since then.  Every time they water the seeds I try to recap on how our faith will grow just like the seed, if we feed it. 

Much to my complete surprise, we woke up with pea plants growing after only 3 days!  Am I the only one who thought it would take a couple of weeks for the seeds to start doing something?  Maybe I am a little bit of a city girl??

Anyway, my kids have loved our FTN (new term for Family Training Night) and even ask me throughout the week if it is our FTN.  So my new mission is to make sure we are incorporating something fun and something that will teach them or challenge them.  And I am pretty sure that they won’t let me get by with skipping a week either.  I really do have good kids…huh?