Wednesday, December 31, 2008

New Years Goal Collage


For family night, I wanted to do something a bit goal oriented to go along with the spirit of the new year, when I came upon this list of ideas from http://www.lds.prg/. The one I liked the best and that I think is going to become an annual tradition is the goal poster. I like this one, because after the kids are tired of it hanging in their rooms, I am going to put them in our family scrapbooks so we can look at what our goals are year after year.


Supplies needed:


  • 12x12 paper (It was fun to let the kids pick a paper that fit their personalities)

  • LOTS of magazines. Church magazines and home magazines worked the best for us, but it really probably depends on your goals.

  • Glue sticks

  • A small picture of each family member

  • Scissors

Each family member gets a paper to glue their picture on to. They then look for pictures to represent the goals they have chosen for themselves for the coming year. This was so much fun...and even our 2 year old loved doing it.

Note: for little little kids, it may help to have some pictures already cut out...Aeden did good, but I think he would have had more fun if he could have focused more on gluing on pictures rather than going through the magazines...it overwhelmed him a little at first.


This is Zerin's Goal Collage. He has lots of pictures of food and vegetables (eating better), President Monson (following the prophet), Faith in God book (to work on his Articles of Faith), a boy with his grandma (do more service for his grandmas), etc.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Joseph Smith's Birthday Party


Every year on December 23, we celebrate Joseph Smith's birthday with a little mini-celebration in the evening. We make a little cake, sing happy birthday, and watch a church history video or read a related story afterwards. The kids love it and look forward to it as part of our holiday celebrations every year.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Christmas Stuff

Okay, this year has been kind of a bust for this blog, but I couldn't let Christmas get away from me without documenting some of my all-time favorite traditions:
  • Making Gingerbread Houses from scratch (this year they are out of graham crackers...but hey :))
  • Doing the 12 days of Christmas
  • Decorating the day after Halloween
  • On the weeks leading up to Christmas, we all keep a mental note of our most favorite decorated homes. Then, on the Family Night before Christmas, we drive around with little "trophies" (usually these are paper sacks of Christmas cookies with a trophy drawn on them) and we take our awards to different families...awarding things like "Most Colorful Lights" or "The Christmas Spirit Award" or "Best Use of Blow Up Figures" and on and on. This is one of my favorite traditions of all-time now.
  • Going to Temple Square to see the lights
  • We have a gift box with a bunch of stars. You do some secret act of service, put a star in the box with your name on it, and leave the box for the recipient to find (usually on the pillow). We try to fill up the box with stars by Christmas Eve.