October 7, 2012

It's conference weekend.  So great. I had two questions going in to conference.  One was to learn the talents and skills my kids need to develop.  Elder Perry answered that  question for me.  I need to plan better FHE lessons - we've been pretty lazy with this lately.  We have it every week, but it's usually thrown together 5 minutes before.  But as I pray and play out FHE lessons, I'll know what things my kids need and be able to teach them. My other question was how to study the scriptures and get answers through the scriptures better.

We signed Danny, Rachel and Aaron up for basketball in the winter. I didn't think Rachel would be interested, but I didn't even have to talk her into it.  I'm excited for her to try it.  And I recruited several other kids for each team, so I should have some good carpools going.

Danny and I had a big talk about whether or not he could read the Hunger Games.  He's asked before and I just said no.  But he came home from school and said almost his whole class has read it and he really wanted to.  So I really thought about it.  I wanted to make sure I wasn't just saying no because it was easier.  But the whole time I could feel the answer would still be no.  I asked several friends with kids Danny's age and my mom, which just solidified my answer. I told him and he was disappointed for about 2 minutes and then he forgot about it. 

We had an experience a couple months ago where he wanted these bucky balls - little super strong magnets you can shape.  I really didn't like it because their so dangerous and we have little ones in our house.  But in the end I justified it and bought them, mostly so I didn't have to hear all of Danny's arguments and complaining.  They came and I warned Danny really strongly about them.  He played with them for a day or two and then came down one night at bed time completely distraught because he was worried he'd swallowed a magnet and didn't know it.  He had Bob give him a blessing.  And we had a good talk about how I had felt it was wrong to buy the magnets, but didn't listen because I wanted to give Danny what he wanted.  It was a good lesson for both of us that sometimes I know or get inspiration for what's better for him and it isn't always what he wants, but we both need to listen and do the right thing.  We returned the magnets.  I think that experience was helpful with the Hunger Games discussion and was probably the main reason his complaint about my answer only lasted two minutes.