FHE

My patriarchal blessing talks about how important Family Home Evening is as I raise my kids and how it can teach them many important and wonderful lessons.  While I can't say we've been great at having family home evening our whole marriage, we've been earnestly trying and putting effort since Kendal was old enough to last through a five minute lesson. I try to keep our family home evenings very basic. First of all our kids aren't going to sit through a lengthy gospel discussion and it's important to keep things on their level. Second I'm generally lazy about the whole thing so I keep it sweet and simple most weeks. Sometimes our topics stem from something we've learned in church recently (ex. follow the prophet), a upcoming holiday (ex. Christmas), something the kids bring up on their own (ex. Kendal pointing out a woman's missing arm = talking about differences we all have and loving all of God's children; or Mommy's sick of my kids fighting = having a lesson on sharing.)
We usually rotate what we do for family home evening every week.
Week one - scripture story / lesson
Week two - gospel priciple (ex. tithing, repentance, baptism, etc.)
Week three - Friend magazine stories / activity
Week four - general principle (kindness, service, love one another, etc.)
Week five - (When it comes around) it's our fun night to play games as a family.
What we do varies every month, we may do scripture stories week one one month and week three the next. It depends on the kids and more often than not if I've put some forethought into the evening.
Since the kids are curious about what Track and Field is, what Daddy does at practice, and they saw only a bit of the Kimberly track meet we had our own track and field FHE tonight. Casey taught the kids about the different events and we practiced them as a family. The kids loved jumping in the sand pit, throwing shot puts (aka baseball's), and jumping on the high jump mat. We gave a short and simple exercise is good for our bodies, minds, and spirits message and called it a successful family home evening.