Every week our family has a Family Home Evening night. It is something asked of us by our Church, and we find that it is a great way to strengthen our family. We generally have a treat and a lesson. For links to other Family Home Evening Lesson Plans, please go here.

This week I wanted to do something fancy. While we catered to my daughter’s girly side, I wanted to cater to my son’s love of all things building and cars….but I was forcing a connection. As I tried to think of all kinds of lessons, I just kept feeling one thing: keep it simple, go back to basics. I was amazed by how I was prompted to get simple…and the lesson soon took a turn to meet the specific needs of my family.

I have all these ideas for upcoming lessons, but they are all complicated concepts. So all week, when I prayed about the lesson, I kept thinking about the SIMPLE concepts. I kept pushing the idea aside, because I wanted to do something fun and fancy. But the concept kept coming back to me over and over again: Heavenly Father.  While I went into the lesson thinking it was a simple talk on who He was, little did I know how I would be guided to discuss concepts unique to the needs of my kids.

But first off, dinner!

I used this recipe for Monterey Chicken from All Things Simple. It was pretty good. I’m not going to write our recipe because husband said he wouldn’t request it again, but wouldn’t NOT eat it if I made it.

I used this recipe from Good Life Eats as a basis for my potatoes, but used russets instead of Yukons (because that’s what I had on hand), lemon zest instead of lemon, basil instead of parsley, and monterey jack cheese instead of parmesan. Oh and I microwaved the potatoes first instead of boiling. So really it is a totally different dish! But it was AMAZING. I also added butter

Smashed Potato Recipe

3 Russet Potatoes

1/2 cup cheese

4 basil leaves

2 scallions

1/2 stick butter

Combine everything but the potatoes

Preheat oven to 475

Microwave potatoes for the potato setting  

Pull them out, smash with fork

Cover with the mixture

Bake until brown and awesome

Pardon the sideways picture (below). I can’t for the life of me get it to flip without taking a crudload more time! So anyway, I showed the kids this picture and asked them who these people were (their answer: I dunno// the correct answer: Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father). Hmmm, guess that means we really needed this lesson! So we talked about who Heavenly Father is and why he is important.

We talked about what he wanted us to do, to which K replied, “Heavenly Father wants me to go potty on the toilet.” To which J replied, “Yeah, Heffly Fadder wan me go….pooootty.” But we talked about other things he wants.

We talked about how he loves us and wants us to talk with him. I talked about how when I was in Bodega Bay and they missed me and wanted to talk on the phone with me–that is how Heavenly Father feels about us. He wants us to pray to him so he can hear from us because he misses us. We also talked about how he wants to help us.

And then it hit me.

K has been scared this week in her room, and I felt an immediate comfort that this lesson was going to help her.

I talked about how Heavenly Father wants to help us. He wants to comfort us and make us feel better. So when we are scared, we can talk to him.

I have told her to pray all the time when she is scared, and have spent several different occasions praying in her room with her, but I felt like she got it this time. I think by helping her understand that Heavenly Father is a real person, it helped her.

But I am also grateful for my husband who chimed in and reminded them that when they pray, they may not hear an audible answer back, but that the person would feel a comfort.

She got it. I know that doesn’t mean I won’t have my girl in bed with me 60% of my nights because she is scared, but at least tonight when I put the lights out in her room she told me she was going to pray to Heavenly Father (she also said that He will help fix the wall that the mosquito ripped through????).

J also got a lot from it, as he would talk about “Heffly Fadder” a few times.

Anyway, back to family night. We took a family walk to get some Fro-Yo. So fun!

Then came back and relaxed in the backyard…

While they were running around, Pops turned on the sprinklers and surprised them…they loved it:

Once they were soaking wet from sprinklers, we bundled them up in towels and had them lay in front of our fireplace to warm up (it’s a faux fireplace that is essentially a TV screen of a fire and a space heater). Then they had PJs, snuggles, stories, prayers, and night-night.

What I learned tonight? Family night doesn’t need to be anything fancy. Think about what you want to do, pray about it. and even if the answer to that prayer seems too simple, it might be exactly what your family needs.

I’d love to hear what you did for family night!

If you follow my Family Home Evening series, you know that family night is VERY important in our house, not just because we are asked to do it by our church, but because it is a great way to bond us together. PLUS, you know how much I love setting goals, well FHE night means we set goals as a family…in other words, we improve together. Pretty tizzle, right?

I feel that every family, regardless of their religion, should consider a family night like this. If you have a different religion, I will provide some suggestions on how to adapt it.

Why do I have a lesson involved with family night? I feel like this is a great teaching opportunity and a wonderful goal setting opportunity. Sure, nights where you do fun stuff can be AWESOME, and we do those too, I just find that these FHE nights carry a special closeness with them, an awareness that we are a family that is growing together and improving together.

So let’s get on to the lesson!

This week, we talked about one of my favorite Biblical characters: Joseph (the Joseph of Joseph and Mary). This was the stepdad of Jesus Christ.

Let me take a second to tell you why I think this guy is a stud. Let’s say you’re a dude dating a chick, and suddenly she comes up to you and says, “I’m pregnant, but I’ve never been with a man. It was a miracle.” How would you feel? I’m sorry but if that were me, I’d have Maury Povich on the line, booking a paternity test. But instead, this guy trusts her. And not only that, but he was an outstanding stepfather who raised an amazing man.

So we started family night by talking about him. We didn’t read any particular scriptures (this is what we call a wing-it family home evening lesson), but we shared the story and both of us talked about why we thought he was important. My husband shared how Joseph taught Christ many things–from carpentry to making good choices. I talked about the role that fathers have in our lives and shared my appreciation for how much the father in OUR home does (great way to give mad props to the husband!).

To adapt: Simply talk about what it means to become a carpenter. What are the things that someone must know in order to build?Obviously in order to build, you’d need to learn the tricks of the trade. You could use this lesson as a good example of how you need to learn from others in order to improve.

For an activity, we used these $9 building kits from Lowe’s. One kid built a train, the other a car.  They had a blast!

We also topped the evening off with some Candyland. Absolutely NO connection to Joseph, but still FUN!

Did you do a family night this week? Share in the comments or, if you are a blogger, link here!

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FAMILY HOME EVENING IDEAS

I am a firm believer that everyone needs a reset button. For our family, we use Sunday as a reset button. Our church encourages us to do this once a week and is officially called a “Family Home Evening.” I personally feel like every family, regardless of their spirituality, should consider a family night like this. I’m not a big preaching-my-religion person (I swear!), but I wanted to show this in case there are some of you with toddlers who need Family Home Evening ideas. You could adapt this lesson to your own spirituality. We generally start with a prayer, have a lesson, have an activity, and then eat a treat.

Have a different religion? No problem! I have suggestions at the bottom on how to adapt it to your spiritual background.

We used to have it focus on whatever we felt our family needed at the time, but I felt like it turned too much into us lecturing our daughter and that didn’t feel right to me at all. So now we just focus on stories from the Scriptures.

So here is the lesson:

(Based on scriptures from 1 Nephi 3 and 1 Nephi 17)

I start by explaining the story. Lehi was a prophet who lived in Jerusalem around 600 BC. At the time, people were doing very bad things, so Heavenly Father told him that he will have to leave (he ended up getting in a ship and going to the Americas). But before he left, there were a few things he had to do. First of all, he was told to get the brass plates that Laban, a wealthy man in Jerusalem, had. These plates held the record of Lehi’s family and were very important. So Lehi asked his son, Nephi, to go and get the plates. Here is the first video we showed:

Questions we asked:

Was Nephi happy to do this?

What are some things Heavenly Father wants US to do? (each of us took turns sharing)

We then explained the Nephi was also asked to build a ship, and he had never built a ship before.

We shared this verse: “I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.” 1 Nephi 3:7

We then showed this video:

We talked about how sometimes we are asked to do something that might seem impossible to do, but if Heavenly Father wants us to do it, then he will provide a way to help us out.

I then challenged the family to build a ship using items around the house and it HAD to float in their bath that night. I thought for sure we’d dig up some carton, put a stick in it for a flag and call it a day, but husband went ALL OUT. We used an empty Marie Calender’s box (a large one from Costco) and cut out our shape. Then we cut brown paper so the boat was brown, and then held it together using black duct tape. We also coated it in press n’ seal to make it waterproof. We put together a sail using pipe cleaners and scrapbooking paper. I was so proud of my daughter, for weeks now I’ve been teaching her to cut, even having her use a spray bottle to spray our plants and mimic the motion of cutting, well tonight she finally got it!

The evening ended with ice cream and watching Dumbo. So much fun!

I also felt like this lesson had already helped me. When we talked about that things we are asked to do, I talked about how I am asked to be a Mom and raise the kids. I’ve really struggled with this lately as daughter is in the middle of the terrible, and I mean terrible twos. I’ve been impatient and SO frustrated. So I said a prayer the next day basically saying, “OK, you want me to be a Mom, so I need your help.” I could feel the help I got that day. Daughter was a little less fussy and I was a little more patient. So already I could see the positive influence of this lesson.

How to morph this for your own personal spirituality:

Is there a story in your religion about obedience? If not (or if you don’t have a specified religion) how about a person in history that did something that seemed totally impossible? Share that story. You may want to look on YouTube to see if there are videos for that story. The beauty of the activity is the fun in trying to be creative, so you don’t need to build a SHIP. Whatever your story is, think of an object you can build. You’ll have so much fun trying to come up with stuff!

I hope this helps you come up with your own ideas for a family night!

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FAMILY HOME EVENING IDEAS

Did you do a family night this week? Share in the comments or, if you are a blogger, link here: