Happy Family

One of the older kids had left their Diary of a Wimpy Kid book on the table and D was looking through it.  While looking at the pictures he said to me, "I wish they had a happy family."
I said, "I wish they did too.  I wish everyone had a happy family."
He said thoughtfully, "Yeah."
Then I told him, "I'm glad you're happy.  That makes our family happy."
He said, "I'm happy because you guys are happy to me!  I love you for that Mommy."
How that boy warms my heart!

And now onto something not wholly related to the title of the post (but that I will add so that it's not another post only about D again)...

As I was trying to come up with a topic for FHE I decided that we needed a lesson on friends and the importance of choosing good ones, but I wasn't sure how to approach it.  I honestly don't spend a lot of time on facebook, but when I got on yesterday to check my messages this link jumped right out at me  http://yourlifeuncommon.blogspot.com/2011/11/fhe-choosing-good-friends.html.  Thanks to my cousin Jen for posting it!  I knew AP would enjoy playing with food dye and bleach, and boy did he.  So much so that I had to keep reminding him that he was supposed to be listening to me (ha, ha!).  AJ and D also stayed very involved.  I won't go into a lot of details because you can check out the link if you're interested in the actual lesson.  However, I will say that the one difference I did was give them each their own bowl of noodles to represent their own group of friends and then we came up with common interests for each of their groups.  Then we talked about possible "sins" to fit each of their groups and they added their own coloring drops.  For example, D's interest was toys and the bad choices were not sharing or grabbing from someone else.  I helped him put his drops in and it worked out great (until he started sticking his hands in it).  AP's group liked video games and cartoons (he put in drops for violence, swearing, and immodesty) and AJ's group liked reading and animals (same kinds of things as AP).  Anyway it went pretty well despite a few little arguments, and while it wasn't perfect it fit what we needed and can be added to the efforts of trying to work together and be a happy family.