Pumpkins & Family Home Morning

James was so excited to get pumpkins this year - just like last year! He has learned a little about pumpkins recently (what with all the pumpkins on people's porches), he knows that they are orange (which is the color we are working on - he's got red down!) and he is pretty good at saying the word "pumpkin" (although it is very similar to the words "pine cone" and "penguin").

Yesterday for our *Family Home Morning activity we bought our pumpkins, and man he was so excited! Here he is, waiting in great anticipation...



This boy loves to go out on our front steps and look at the "beeg" (big) pumpkins. He can tell you which one is his (the smallest one), which one is Mama's (the medium one), and which one is Daddy's (the big one).

What fun it is to have kids around the holidays!



*Because of our family's schedule, we can't have Family Night on Monday nights. So, we decided to have "Family Home Morning" on Monday mornings. It has been so much fun and a real blessing in our lives.

Back before James was born, Jonathan and I were both in school and would get home late on Monday night, eat dinner, do homework and struggle to fit Family Night in because we were so tired and trying to do so many other things. We were in a Sunday School class one Sunday where we were discussing Family Home Evening, and somebody made a comment that totally changed our Family Nights. They said that one thing that had worked for them was to just designate the entire evening as family night, instead of just trying to fit it in and get it done and check it off the list.

We thought this sounded interesting, so we tried it. It turned Family Night from something we had to get done to something we really looked forward to! We decided that from the time we got home from school in the evenings (or from dinner time until we went to bed) it was family night. We didn't do any homework during that time, we just spent time together, until we went to bed. This helped to make it more of a priority, and, frankly, more of a party. It was almost like a second date night to look forward to.

Although it is hard sometimes, we try to do the same thing now. All morning long is family time, and we really look forward to it!