Family Week

Our stake has a tradition of having a family week every June where all church meetings ,except Sunday services, are canceled in order to promote a week of family togetherness. We are encouraged to spend an entire week devoted to quality family time. They ask us to turn the TV off for the week and use the computer sparingly, avoiding the playing of electronics and video games. It was brought to my attention rather quickly how often I rely on the computer and TV to occupy my children while I get a few things done. I didn't feel like I did this too much, but I did realize how often I do. Kinzy was such a good sport, she never asked me if she could watch TV. One morning when I left her and Kaylie at the gym's daycare she confessed to me they had a movie on but she tried her hardest not to watch it since she knew that was something she wasn't supposed to do this week. Children can be so sweet. She was obviously told very thoroughly in primary how family week should go because kept us all on the right path if we started to do things we weren't supposed to. One day I had to research a few things and pay a couple bills and she made me fully aware of how much time I was spending on the computer during family week. I love how children keep us on our toes.

We don't really have any issues with being together yet, I know that will probably come as our children get older. We all love to be together and the best part of Kaylie's day is when she here's the garage door chirp, which signals to her that Daddy's home. She always goes running to greet him with a warm hug and smile. I decided to plan some different activities that Kinzy always begs for since we are always together anyway, I thought I'd make it especially fun and memorable for her. I wanted to keep a balance though, so I planned a few projects that we could do as a family, so we could get both the work and the play in.

Kinzy had a blast helping Steve paint some shelves for the girl's bedrooms. We all got eaten alive by bugs the night we did yard work. Mommy forgot how bad the bugs can get here in Tennessee in the summer since we haven't been out in it that much yet. Night swimming was a fun activity that we got to do with Tasha, Scott, and Emery, that was probably Kinzy's favorite night of all since she loves swimming. And on the weekend we finally showed our kids what camping truly is.

During the days we did some fun things like swimming, we attended a free movie at Opry Mills theater, and we also got to take a tour of the Purity Dairy where they make all their yummy icecream after the tour we got to taste many different flavors.

Kinzy cried when we told her we would be going camping. All she knew was that when you go camping the ticks jump out of the trees and get on you. Hands down the funniest thing she said was when we pulled up and Kinzy saw all the RV's and asked why we didn't have one of those. They looked a whole lot better at keeping the bugs out then our knewly acquired tent. Our friends the Cluff's helped break us in to camping in Tennessee. They came with us and gave us a bunch of great tips to make things more comfortable and easy. I can't believe we've lived here for over five years and haven't gone camping. We've stayed in cabins but never really camped. This was a lot of work for us, but well worth it. Our kids had a great time, we even fished and didn't get any bites, but hey, the quality family time was what we were going for. Steve paid $6 to rent a boat for half a day to fish from. The girls literally screamed the entire time we were on the boat. It felt like everyone at the marina was looking at us thinking we were child abusers. Kinzy because she thought she was going to die from all the bugs and Kaylie because I was restraining her from jumping into the lake. Luckily Steve was able to get his money's worth by taking the others who had come with us out on the boat for the rest of the time. The girls and I had a much better time observing and feeding the fish from the shore. A very nice grandma who was there with her grandchildren shared her bread with us so we could feed the fish too. We even saw a turtle which helped us feel better about the one we just lost.

I can honestly say we had a great family week. We grew closer as a family and closer to our Saviour Jesus Christ as we reflected on how grateful we are to have each other, that we always want to be together, and that because of what Christ has done for us we can be together forever in His presence.

p.s. we will post pictures of our activities a little later so please check back soon