History, it's a Family (Home Evening) thing!

I was reading Sweet Mama Entropy this morning, she wrote about memes and how she's used them to come up with questions to use for a family reunion she just had.

It reminded me of some special family home evenings that we did a few years ago. Each Monday night when we held family home evening we would end the lesson and then hand out a "My History" page. The page had three sections.....Then, Now, and My Spiritual Life. Under each heading I would type a question for each person to answer, or a statement for them to finish with their own thoughts. As time progressed I started sending the "My History" page by e-mail to our extended family and they would e-mail it back so I could add it to our Family Home Evening Book.

Here's an example:

• Then....
• I consider myself an optimist (or pessimist) because......

• Now...
• If satisfied with your present attitude explain how you maintain it (optimism), if not satisified list some ways to improve your outlook.

• My Spiritual Life....
• I'm counting my blessings....here are some of them...
• 1.
• 2.
• 3.
• 4.
• etc...

And here's another example ...

• Then...
• Some of the best advice I ever got was...

• Now...
• A piece of advice I'd like to pass on to my children, friends, etc. is....

• My Spiritual Life....
• I am grateful for so many things but a few of them are.....

It was like a meme for family home evening. We kept all the pages in our Family Home Evening Notebook which includes:

1. Monthly calendar pages with FHE assignments written on the appropriate night,
2. An Outline Page for the night stating the title and objective of the lesson, who gave the lesson,prayer, scripture, and activity,
3. Notes about the lesson and any family discussion
4. Pictures taken if we had an activity, and
5. Recipes for the refreshments, etc.

(I actually have pictures to share of our family home evening book but for some reason can't upload them....I'll keep trying)

Getting the "My History" pages from extended family members really added something special to our Family Home Evenings and gave us something to look forward to during the week. We only did it for a year (now that I've looked back through the book I want to do it again) but it gave us pages of Family History that we wouldn't have gotten any other way.

If you only have young children at home consider asking the questions out loud and then just writing down what they say, or if they are really young, just fill out the pages for yourself and your spouse.....someday those young children of yours will LOVE reading about your family home evenings and getting to know mom and dad by reading what you've written!