In our family. . .

One thing I look forward to at the beginning of every month is checking the mail and finding this magazine:

I like to think that my girls get just as excited as I do. We usually get some snacks, snuggle on the couch, and read it cover to cover. I cry at least once while reading it, and the girls are left feeling good and inspired to be better. Just last week I was telling Spencer how anxious I was for "The Friend" to arrive, cause I needed some new reading material to motivate Madi (she's currently in her "hard" stage again). Luckily it arrived the next day! As we were reading, I was pleasantly surprised to find an article on following family rules (a perfect follow-up from our family meeting the previous Sunday)! So this week at our family meeting, we complied a list of "DO" and "DO NOT" rules. This whole thing is definitely a work in progress, but it has been nice not to have to yell at the girls to, "stay at the table", or "don't scream in the house"! Instead, I simply say, "In our family we don't scream in the house!" or "In our family we have good table manners".

With that said, here's the start of our DO / DO NOT list that we created Sunday:
In our family we DON'T. . .
- scare each other (there's been an issue with Madi scaring Elle)
- scream in the house (again, Madi... she's also got an extra loud voice these days)
- hit each other (one of the girls must have added this one but I promise it's not Spencer or I who have been doing the hitting!)
- jump on the couch
- draw on the couch, table, floor, or any other piece of furniture (another issue we had with Madi)
- say mean things
- have sleep-overs (it's so much better to have the child tell their friend, "In my family we don't have sleep-overs", than have the mom be the bearer of bad news)

DO
In our family we. . .
- sing (added by me- I'm determined to have a family of singers)
- love each other
- keep the Sabbath day holy
- go to the beach (at the end of last summer Madi started putting up a stink about going to the beach too much. Spencer quickly squelched her complaints and coined the phrase, "we are a beach family")
- jump on the trampoline (instead of the couch:)
- keep our house clean and orderly
- have good table manners (this was Spencer's - he goes crazy with the girls getting down from their seats before being excused, not eating much, and complaining about all their food.)
- pray and read the scriptures every day
- serve each other
- look out for one another
- share
- tell the truth

All these rules will eventually be simplified down to a few basic ones, and we still need to come up with consequences for breaking and/or incentives for obeying. Again, a work in progress!