CFM

The Come, Follow Me curriculum from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is wonderful.  And I love that everyone in the Church is studying the same thing throughout the year: in church classes for all ages, in seminary, and at home.

I'd like to say that our Come, Follow Me lessons at home are exemplary.  They're not.  Sometimes they are really focused and thought-provoking, but other times they're as brief as reading a verse and sharing a thought about it, or as simple as watching a Book of Mormon video.  And there are days when it doesn't happen at all, though we do try to start our days on a spiritual note on weekdays, and have a formalish lesson on Sundays.

Of course, our weekday mornings are busy.  Trying to get 4 kids and at least 1 parent groomed, fed, and prepped by 7:50 is a challenge just about every day.  It's loud and hectic and there's no telling who will be in a bad mood at any given moment.  So our morning CFM lessons (using the term very loosely) are often crazy.  And since we are... we'll say... a fun-loving family, our longer Sunday lessons tend to unravel pretty quickly, if they were ever ravelled to begin with.

So it dawned on me the other day that CFM probably more appropriately stands for Chaotic Family Moments at our house: Chaotic Family Moments with scriptural themes running through them and ending with a prayer.  Hopefully we're creating positive memories, and the efforts will pay off in greater understanding for all of us, however incremental the improvement might be.

Acting out Part 1 of Getting the Brass Plates from Laban before school

After learning about Nephi building a boat, each kid had 10 minutes to build his/her
own boat.  Cat was done in 30 seconds, taping a plastic IKEA cup to a plastic
IKEA plate, and her boat worked perfectly.  The other kids took more time.

Eliza created her boat mostly using aluminum foil and Gorilla tape.  Luke got
some help and advice from Ben for his LEGO boat.  They taped an air-filled
zip-top bag to the bottom to make the boat float.

And then this happened.

Since we shifted to morning CFM time we aren't doing the family scripture study we used to do at bedtime.  This has opened up an opportunity to have a more informal check-in time instead.  We gather for a family prayer in the evening and I'll often ask a question and everyone will respond.  What was your favorite part of the day?  Or what kind thing did you do for someone today?  Or what kind thing did someone do for you?  Or what interesting thing did you learn?  Or what are you grateful for?  I love this.  It's great to have some time to just chat, and it often evolves into telling stories or jokes, or tickling or other shenanigans.  More CFM.  But that's just fine.  (You know, until we actually need to get to bed... and then it can become problematic, but we won't talk about that right now.)