I aspire to be one of those perfect Mom's. You know, the ones that have their children gathered at their feet every morning. Those beautiful and reverent children are listening to mom read the scriptures and participate happily in morning prayers.
Her house is perfectly clean and she does awesome volunteer work at her kids' schools, because she is a stay-at-home-mom. Her children love her for her sacrifices.
After her husband gets home from work, she calls her family to the table for dinner, where they enjoy a scrumptious home cooked meal. They sit around the table smiling and enjoying every one's company. No one is longing to play a video game, watch TV or text their friend. These children and their dad love to spend time at the table with this mom.
Her kids have a flawless evening routine of watching a show together as a family, before getting ready for bed. A family prayer is said and they all bid goodnight ready to start over in the morning.
This mom also plans the perfect family home evening lessons and activities and she teaches the best lessons at church.
This is the mom I aspire to be. I hope you are all sitting down for this declaration. My reality is that I am far from perfect, and my family is far from perfect. I know you are shocked!
My Daily Do's... those seemingly simple things that we've been asked to do with our family... are my Daily Sometimes or even worse, my Daily Don'ts. Instead of becoming increasingly frustrated with myself, I decided to work on my Daily Do's one Daily Do at a time. I am famous for making wide sweeping changes that leaves my family frustrated and unhappy. I thought that if I worked on it one element at a time, I would have more success.
The first Daily Do that I tackled was Family Dinner. You would think this would be easy enough, right? My sweet husband, needs constant visual stimulation. It doesn't matter what is going on in our house. The TV must be on. He needs to see things fluttering across the screen. My son has inherited that same gene. When we bought our house, I noticed that the kitchen table was not within the sight of the TV. It didn't occur to me to be concerned until we moved in. My husband would quickly grab his plate and run to the living room.
Later, we had children. I would sit in the kitchen with the kids and Fred would sit in the living room watching TV. And then, my kids reached teenagerdom. My youngest, follows Dad's lead and runs with his plate to watch TV. My oldest, often sits at the table. I try to sit with her, but she is on a mission. She wants to eat and then move on to her next activity.
I decided enough is enough, and I am so grateful that my husband got on the bandwagon with me. Family Dinners shouldn't be that hard, but you would think that I was killing my son. He says it is the most boring time of the day for him. My daughter has been more accepting. However, there are times that, she too, feels that the family dinner will kill her Those would be the times when she is told to put her phone down during dinner.
As a family we are also tackling Family Home Evening and keeping the Sabbath Day Holy. Once I feel like we are sufficiently handling the three things that I've set out to accomplish, then we will add on. Family prayer will be our next Daily Do to accomplish. Jonathan and I say a prayer together everyday, but we are the only participants... right now.
Now you know that the Fortenberry Four is far from perfect.
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