Treasures and Trash

This is the post for last mondays Noche de Hogar. Its a little late but the lesson kinda didn't end till today.

Oracion: Andrei

Right before we started with our pensamiento the kids started saying the first Article of Faith, We believe in God the Eternal Father, His son Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost, WORD FOR WORD! What a proud moment.

Pensamiento: Flor
Our family has been trying to be really conscious of our impact on the environment and Flor has really been teaching alot about recycling and turning our house into a more "green" house. Todays pensamiento was on the impacts of just throwing away all our trash. She taught us how to clean the recyclables and also how to make sure we are recycling correctly. Nati and Andrei are both really good at recycling what can be recycled.

Activity 1:
The lil ice breaker this time had us separation into two groups. Andrei and mama, and Nati and Papa. The point was to tell your partner 3 things that they liked about them. It was real cute to hear what the kids thought of us and it was just as cool to hear what they think of us.

Lesson:
The activity lead to our discussion on the lesson. We talked about how words made people feel. We called the good words "Treasures" and the bad ones "Trash".

I made a list of both Treasure and Trash words and cut them out into squares. They went through the words and talked about how those words made them feel.

WORDS:
Treasures

• I love you
• You look nice
• Thank you
• Please
• Your Welcome
• Can I help You?
• I like you
• Your a cool person

Trash

• I hate you
• your ugly
• your dumb
• stupid
• Why?
  
• I don't like you
• your a jerk
• I don't care

The treasure words they kept and used them to make a craft treasure chest to put up in their room in order to remember to be nice all week. The trash they crumbled up and threw away.

Oracion: Natalia

Long Term Activity:
We also had a week long activity. We drew a picture of a trash can and a treasure chest on the white board. Through out the week we would fill in some of the sections of each depending on if we all used treasure words or trash words. The prize was that if at the end of the week we had filled the treasure chest the kids would get something from Barnes and Nobles.

Since Nati, Andrei and Adrian are sweet and kind kids they filled up that treasure chest quick. They got to choose something. Nati got herself a cool kaleidoscope and Andrei got a washable coloring book.

We had a great Noche de Hogar. I liked the way we had a goal to work on throughout the week. I think I'ma do more of those type of activities.

Honesty

Since today was a make-up day for our Noche de Hogar I felt the urge (laziness) to keep it light. I knew that Honesty had to be the topic. We have had a problem at the house where Nati and Andrei are starting to think that blatantly lying is acceptable. I mean seriously, they will do something in front of our faces and deny it! lol

Himno: Sigue al Profeta

Andrei dio la primera oracion y oro para que nuestro Padre Celestial ayudara a su mama y a Adrian para que se sintieran mejor. They where both feeling a lil down and it seems to have helped.

Natalia dio el pensamiento. We recently got her a real nice and cute Bible so she wanted to read a scripture from there. She read:

Psalms 19:7- The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

After pensamiento we played a quick game called "2 truths and a lie". The game is that each person has to say 2 truths about themselves and one lie. the others have to guess which is the lie. We played a few rounds. With this game i was able to show them that they knew the difference between the truth and a lie. I told them that honesty was important. I didn't want to bash them over the head with the idea of honesty since this wasn't a time to make them feel bad. I wanted to show them examples of dishonesty. I showed them a short video on youtube called "The boy who cried wolf"



after the video discussed why lying was bad and the consequences of lying.

As our last activity we watched The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! It was a cool lil movie because the Cat in the Hat talked alot about science stuff. He rhymes everything too, if the Cat in the Hat was a rapper he would be up there with Jay Z and Eminem haha

Natalia gave the closing prayer. We had a great time tonight just relaxing and enjoying each others company. I want to find out more cool things in regards to honesty since it is a broad topic. Its more than just lying.

Being Daddy and a few things I've learned along the way

     We had to skip Noche de Hogar today. It wont be skipped till next week but we did have to move it to tomorrow. I felt bad about it. The kids really love FHE. I didn't want to skip out on a chance to blog about my favorite subject though. My lil ones.      


  Being a father is by far my favorite thing in the world. What I love most about Noche de Hogar es que the kids really listen. My heart feels like its about to burst every time they are involved and having fun. Waking up and seeing my wife and kids every day is my constant reminder that my Heavenly Father loves me. I was given the honor to help raise His little ones. To guide them and teach them the best I can.

   I been learning a lot as I stumble my way through fatherhood. I pick up new things here and there. One of the little things I've learned that has changed my way of parenting was that any consequence to a negative action has to be relative to what they did wrong and it also has to be fair in terms of severity. Sometimes as parents we can get all worked up and just yell "go to your room!" In doing this, we have completely missed out on a learning experience. As parents we have to prepare our kids for the real world. I have set up Andrei's room in a way where its fairly easy for him to keep track of his toys. He knows that if he leaves them laying around and doesn't put them back in their place, I'ma take care of them for him. Since I started doing that Andrei has been taking more care of his toys.
   I'm still fairly new to the Church. I'm still learning so much every time I pick up my scriptures or go to church. Flor is a excellent teacher too. I learn a lot from her not only in Church related topics but also about life. She is an great mother and she helps me be a better daddy. Being LDS has changed my life. With all my heart and soul I know the Church is true. The Church has many doctrines that I love. One of the things the Church emphasizes and that has really begun to change my behavior is the focus on free will and personal choice. I try to make sure the kids always have a choice. They can choice whether they make good choices or bad choices. Both have consequences.

On a side note today was fun! I took the kids to play at a playground for a bit. Nati, Andrei and me where running around playing football. Whoever had the ball had to run and not get tackled. We ran up and down the slides, jumped off the stairs and bolted up around the playground. I could still keep up but now I know I got to keep in shape as they get older! I don't want be the old fat dad who can't take the kids hiking cuz he starts wheezing 50 yards into the hike haha Oh and if you are wondering Adrian was chilling watching us run around. He is happy as long as he is included. Lol.

   Well, maybe 30 mins into our football game Andrei puked. So Nati and me said, "Ewww" and the game kinda ended. We just decided to leave since it was windy anyways and Andrei was stinky. As we drove home, Nati reminded us about Guitar Center and we took a detour and went to check out the guitars and drums. Man, some of those guitars are ill. Nati and the boys loved it. They are all really into music, not just listening, but instruments and singing too. Andrei is a natural. He grabbed a Ukelele and started strumming! Nati was fascinated by the electric guitars. She just sat on a stool and kept playing with all the guitars. They loved the drums too. All in all it was fun to window shop at the Guitar store.
   After our adventure, we went back home to pick up mommy. We all went to meet Andrei's new T-ball team. We are the Angels this season. I'ma be assistant coach.

  We didn't have Noche de Hogar, but we always have fun together and are close knit and inseparable. We will have Noche de Hogar tomorrow and I will make sure to post it up here. I just had a few thoughts that i felt like writing down.