"Hey Everybody, It's Family Night..."

I am willing to admit that I have spent an unhealthy amount of time with the laminater lately.

But what I have to show for it so far are 40 ready-to-go, cut, colored, and laminated Family Home Evening lessons. I have 52 lessons in the drawer, and hope to be finished laminating them by the end of the week. That should be enough for an entire year, since we have FHE once a week, but I got about half of the lessons through swaps with other moms, and therefore many of the topics are WAY above anything that my young kids would be entertained by, let alone understand. But 2 years ago, that would have applied to about 90% of the lessons, so I'm glad I started putting them together and builing a collection early. I'm trying to put together more lessons that are age appropriate for MY little ones, so about half the time I end up creating a lesson that day, rather than drawing from this reserve.

I'm doing another lesson swap at the end of this month (where everyone makes 5 copies of the same lesson, then we trade and have 5 different lessons that are ready to go) with moms that all have really young kids, so all the lessons should be age appropriate and have fun activities for my family. I can't wait to use them. I love Monday nights, and the girls love them too. It is so fun to be able to finally put some of them to use and witness my children benefit from my hard work and preparation!
...and before you call me an over-achiever,

Let me just assure you, right now, that many of our evenings go as follows...
We sing Popcorn Popping
An opening prayer is said by one child, while the other runs in circles around the living room.
We attempt a 5 minute lesson on "reverence" (see line above)
We play a rockin' game of Lucky Ducks together, until Quincy has succesfully snatched enough of the Duckies to make the game impossible to play.
We attemt to coax Q back into the room and give us the ducks.
She giggles and runs away.
Pieces chases Q.
Daddy chases Reese.
Mom chases Dad.
More giggles.
Reverence is long gone out the window.
We have a closing prayer anyway...which is very similar to the opening prayer, but with two children now running around in circles and giggling ... and sometimes a Daddy too.
I get mad that no one is even listening and why did I bother.
Reese reminds me that Jesus is watching me and I shouldn't be so grouchy.
More running.
We end up in the kitchen and eat the snack the girls prepared before Aaron got home...or sometimes just open a bag of chips and onion dip and stuff our faces until our breath is so bad we can no longer stand to be in the same room with each other.
Kids go to bed.
Aaron and Meg bust out the ice cream.
The latest fave? French Vanilla ice cream and Tropicana Some Pulp Orange Juice floats---don't knock it 'till you rock it.

...and THAT is a perfect evening.