Family Council--Sept. 2

Background: Growing up in the Ron and Stephanie Bjarnason home armed with me with many great family traditions that have taken root with Dan's family's traditions in the Dan and Liz Player home. Many of them are spiritual in nature (ex. FHE, daily family prayer, and family scripture time) but many of them are purely practical. Family council was born out of practicality sometime in my teenage years when the eight colliding schedules had become complicated and transportation and drivers had to be matched. Frankly, FHE was getting too contentious with the necessary bargaining, so Sunday night became Family Council time right after scripture time.

By the way, my mom recently let me in on the secret that she and Dad tried to come up with as many reasons as possible to require our collective attendance to ensure family unity. She sure loved us enough to mandate our presence!

Dan and I started holding Family Council right away in our marriage. We've normally calendared, given each other "feedback" (just like good old missionary companionship inventory), and just generally used it to maintain our schedules. Holding it on Sunday frees up FHE for the streamlined song-prayer-lesson-activity-treat format we love on Monday nights. In the last year we've involved Joshua and we've included a goal-setting time for him and a traditional bowl of popcorn. He really gets into it.

I just thought I'd let you in on last night's minutes for the meeting. I don't usually keep track of these, but last night's made me laugh. I realized how typical it is of life with my boys.

• 6:00 Started with a song and dug into the popcorn
• 6:05 Joshua decided that he did "awesome" in sacrament meeting (by reading and drawing and being ready for the sacrament) but we determined that next week he needs to refrain from running around while Liz is setting up the primary room and getting ready for sharing time. Follow up next week.
• 6:10 Calendar time--Liz whipped out the planner to reveal another busy week with plenty of social events and obligations. Dan calendared the planting of the front lawn. Still to plan--where Dan will watch the BYU/UCLA game on Friday since the EQ president's home might not be an option during the EQ BBQ.
• 6:20 Joshua still had popcorn so Dan shared a spontaneous spiritual thought. It went like this more or less. (In reference to BYU's season-opening victory over Arizona on Saturday), Dan said "Son, the Arizona fans are saying that they had more talent than we did, and this may be true. They are also saying that BYU is a bunch of nobodies. This is not true. What is true is that you can have a lot of talent and not play like a team, and you're going to lose. Or you can play like BYU and be as united as they were and play like a team just like they did and you will win. Just like the Cougars did last night. So son, let's be united. Go Cougs."
  
• 6:22 Joshua obviously needed some wiggle time, so the natural extension of Dan's spiritual thought was teaching him how to chop his feet and do "Up-Downs". Repeat this later when he needs to be worn out before bed.
• 6:30 Family council concluded with Joshua being a sweaty mess. And ready for storytime.