I have been given the assignment of teaching a mini class on Super Saturday September 13. The class topic is "How to simplify your Sunday". When they gave ME the assignment I had to sit and laugh in their faces..."do you know who you are asking to do this?" I replied. We are the family that has a hard time getting to church on time, being reverent, have teenagers stay awake during Sacrament (also Papa), being happy to be at church, and the list can and does go on!
So what I need from everyone who reads this blog is to give me advice, tips and ways they simplify and handle their Sundays. I need this ASAP so I can do a decent mini class...
9 comments:
We have 1:00 church right now so that simplifies a lot for us but even still here are a few things that I do.
I always give Noah his bath the night before. I double whatever I cook on Saturday so we can have leftovers for dinner on Sunday. We do cereal for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch. I try to pack the diaper bag on Saturday too.
Hopefully this helps. GOOD LUCK!
I've been trying to think of ideas ever since I got your email - unfortunately I, like you, am not great with the Sabbath day holy thing.
I do think it's nice to try and keep your Sunday meals simple - not rush around preparing 8 courses. Dessert can be made a day ahead, all the cleaning and prep can be done on Saturday so that you can feel more peaceful and calm on the Sabbath.
My mom tried to keep a list of good Sabbath activities for us to choose from: journal-writing, walks, naps, letter-writing, less-rowdy family games (like checkers), church movies, etc. Those are so hard to enforce though, especially with teenagers.
I think you'll do a great job - with your big family, I'm sure you've had to learn a lot of ways to simplify your lives!
My kids have always been very creative and artsy. When we have late church, I have a problem with the children fighting and wasting the hours before church and we leave for church in the absolute wrong mood. So I plan a 'project' for them and lay it out on the kitchen island for them to work on on Sunday morning. For example, Christian was teaching a FHE on the armor of God, so the project was for all 3 kids to work on each of the symbols as visual aids for FHE the next day. Also, they have helped each other with PersonalProgress/Scout projects.
When we have early church we just flip this to the evening hours.
In our home, the fellas do Sunday meals. Which means simple meals they can handle, plan, and shop for. It is fun and different for them, and gives me a day completely off from cooking.
When I do laundry, I already pair up the boys Sunday clothes as I launder them. For instance, I hang slacks, shirt, and socks on ONE hanger for Christian and he carries all his hanging stuff upstairs and he knows exactly where all his stuff is. This works great for the boys, Savannah never has a problem being ready on time.
The very last thing I do at night, as I lock all the doors and turn off lights, I also set church bags/scriptures, etc by back door... ready to grab on way out door for church.
I love Sunday, it truly is my favorite day of the week. Guaranteed time with my family! Good luck!
We are almost always running late or missing something we need (scriptures, sippy cup, etc). So I need your class! One thing that does help is Jarom does Addie's bath on Sunday's which allows me to get ready at the same time. Oh, I try to keep my diaper bag and our scriptures in the kitchen near the door, and we always have a simple breakfast (muffins from a mix, cinnamon rolls from a can, etc).
I need a class as well...but a couple of things that do help (and I may be echoing some other comments) are: we have the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single Sunday. Breakfast is cinnamon rolls, lunch is sandwiches, dinner is pizza. It is such a routine that there is absolutely no thinking about it. And since there is no major cooking, there is no clean up. So instead of a big Sunday dinner, we do ours on Mondays (or whatever night works). An obvious help is to have everyone bathed the night before. I also get all church bags ready and waiting the night before. I make the girls get completely ready for church before they even eat...saves tons of arguing and time...they are totally motivated to eat so they get ready right away. But I have 3 little people to juggle. Those with larger families may not be able to benefit the same. If, in your "research" for your class, you stumble across some fabulous ideas...will you please post them? That would be such a huge help. Especially for those of us with toddlers and bigger kids.
I could use some help in this area as well...
We are pretty much always on time, the kids behave decently during church, is the before and after that I find I am struggling with right now. My house seems to fall apart during the getting-ready, and by the time we got home, everyone is tired and hungry (which means GROUCHY), and it just keeps going downhill with no daddy home to be the 'enforcer.' So, post your mini-class. I need all the help I can get to make my Sundays a truly worshipful day.
Also, I HAVE been tossing some ideas around in my head of things we can do to help our situation, I'll give them to you when I can actually make sense of them.
Sundays are our days for PCI's (Parent-Child Interviews). We sit down with one of the children and go over their Duty to God, Personal Progress, or Faith in God. We also talk about their goals short-term and long-term. Given that my sweetheart is fairly busy on Sundays--we also try to make sure we have time for scriptures before he leaves for his meetings or if we have first meeting in the morning we read later in the evening.
I always try to plan ahead what we are going have on the menu for Sunday. I try to keep it simple such as crockpot meals, breakfast or large sandwiches - french bread split and made into hoagie or other types of sandwiches.
The children also try to work on Family Home Evening lessons, we watch "Sunday" movies. We enjoy playing games together - Carcasonne, Missionary Impossible, Knights of Catan, etc.
I have always tried to have the Sunday bag ready on Saturday. I no longer take responsiblity for getting the children's clothes ready. . . I remind them and ask if I can see what they are planning on wearing, however it is their responsibility to pull it together. I still do it for the 5 year old though :)
Sometimes we invite new members of the ward, neighbors or friends over for a pot-luck dinner .
We have gone for a walk as a family and stop in on members leaving cookies, etc.
Some of the children including Roger and I looked forward to naptime. We would have quiet time for a couple of hours and play church music.
I think all those comments are way better than what I could come up with. I think my favorite ones is to have you church bags waiting by the door. I think it would be cool to give out some crock-pot recipes because I think that really helps cut down on the stress of Sunday and nothing is better than coming home from church with the smell of food. I will keep thinking about it and let you know if I come up with anything grand.
I'm so sad I missed your class! I had to leave at noon. These comments are great though!! I know we don't even have kids yet but it's always good to have ideas before, plus Jason and I have a hard time ourselves sometimes!!
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