My Little Lambs

There was a talk from General Conference in April of last year that really touched my heart and has stayed with me since then.  In his talk, {Establishing a Christ-Centered Home}  Elder Maynes quotes a poem by C. C. Miller titled "The Echo." 

'Twas a sheep not a lamb
That strayed away in the parable Jesus told,
A grown-up sheep that strayed away 
From the ninety and nine in the fold.
And why for the sheep should we seek
And earnestly hope and pray?
Because there is danger when sheep go wrong:
They lead the lambs astray.
Lambs will follow the sheep, you know,
Wherever the sheep may stray.
When sheep go wrong,
It won't take long till the lambs are as wrong as they.
And so with the sheep we earnestly plead
For the sake of the lambs today,
For when the sheep are lost 
What a terrible cost
The lambs will have to pay.

How powerful and true!  In this world where there are so many stray paths to find, it gives me great hope and peace to know that as long as I stay the course my children will not turn away.

Tonight we held our weekly Family Home Evening {usually a Monday night activity} due to the craziness of our day yesterday.  Grace volunteered to do the lesson because she REALLY loves to dress-up as "Sister Friendly."  Since our subscription to The Friend has expired and I've only just now renewed it, Grace had to make do instead with creating various Fall and Conference-themed activities and songs on her own to stick in her pockets for the whole family to choose from.  It was really cute. 

 Do you like how she's sporting my old, busted up pair of glasses?

One of the slips of paper in her pockets.

 Sophie's effort.

 "Jane's" effort.  

 And an example of what Grace had in mind.

While watching the "lesson" unfold I had the conscious thought that THIS -- our Family Home Evening, the singing, the being together and playing as a family -- was really nice.  Believe me, it is a RARE time when everything falls into place and we have a pleasant experience throughout the entire night, but this idea of reserving one night out of the week to take a break from busy schedules and just be together and do something as a family is a really good one. 

 Ethan came up with a game called "Pumpkin Launch" where they tried to throw something in each of these pumpkin cans.

Alex was so excited he decided to try and walk across the room.

Ethan successfully put the First Presidency and Twelve Apostles in the correct order.

And even when we have a less than successful FHE {which is pretty much most weeks}, there is still comfort in knowing that not all our efforts are lost.  As Elder Maynes said of their own experience, "We learned that our children might not remember everything about the family home evening lesson later in the week, but they would remember that we held it.  We learned that later in the day at school they would probably not remember the exact words of the scriptures or the prayer, but they would remember that we did read scriptures and we did have prayer.  Brothers and sisters, there is great power and protection for us and our youth in establishing celestial traditions in the home."

So, whether or not they realize what is happening, we will do our best to keep our lambs in the fold.  For such precious little lambs are they.  And entertaining ones at that. 

{Funniest line of the day}:
ETHAN -- "I don't want to go to Joann's because I'll be too tempted to spend money on stuff and I want to save it for the book fair."