BEHOLD YOUR LITTLE ONES

I have a confession to make; in 10 1/2 years of marriage we've never had a serious, sit down, have a lesson type family home evening...until this week. I usually justify not doing it by saying that we spend family time together at least once a week (doing chores, watching Dancing with the Stars, rough-housing with Brandt...), it's too hard because I work and don't have time to prepare anything, and besides Brandt's too little to understand yet anyway, right? Wrong!! So, last week I was reading an article in the Ensign and had the very distinct prompting that Brandt is old enough and that I need to start NOW. The preparation part was actually easier than I thought it would be thanks to Sonja and Rusty sending Brandt home with a picture and finger puppets from nursery. We also have a copy of the nursery manual, Behold Your Little Ones, thanks to my mom and dad giving us one for Christmas, so I was able to match up the handouts with which lesson he had. So, on Sunday afternoon I let Brandt color his picture some more while I cut out his finger puppets and then he helped with taping them together (oh my!!). Monday night after dinner I asked him if he was ready for the lesson and he got so excited. He ran and got his dad off the couch and brought him over to sit on a blanket on the floor. The lesson was very short and sweet, but he had so much fun helping with the Joseph Smith story with his puppets and picture that he colored. Yesterday we got two encore performances-one for my mom and then later for my dad, so I guess he got more out of it than I thought he would. I LOVE the nursery manual! It has pictures to color and activities for each lesson and can be adapted for just about any age. My plan now is to use the handouts that he gets at nursery every week (thanks ahead of time to Matt and Tara!) and do sort of a review lesson for FHE the next night. Hopefully I'll be able to stick with it since I'm sure it will be so worth it!