Prayers

At least a few times a year, James and I have an fhe lesson on prayer.  This is usually out of disgust with the decay of decorum displayed by our children during family prayer.  Also it is out of guilt, because it is expressly taught us in the scriptures that parents should teach their children how to pray.  It is also the result of the constant rolling of eyes that we give each other after each hurried, un-thought-out prayer that one of our children gives.  So our latest lesson went pretty well.  We discussed how sometimes its tricky to remember anything about our day to tell our mom and dad.  In fact, usually the minute we are asked how our day went, we forget everything that happened to us.  So we talked about how normal this is and then we suggested that we each make up a list of things that we could potentially remember to pray about.  I was pleasantly surprised by the seriousness with which the boys all took this assignment.  We actually had total silence for about 10 minutes (maybe it wasn't quite that long) while each boy pondered and wrote ideas.  We then shared them and invited the boys to add anything to their list that they liked from the other lists.  I've been helping Tommy with his nightly prayers all week, and he's remembered every night.  It feels a little "puritan" or something to see him pull out his list (kind of like a catechism or something of that sort) but its really great to see him deepening his prayers in this way.  Its actually quite encouraging.  Here's his sweet little list that he wrote all by himself:

I especially enjoy his spelling of Holy Ghost (looks like holecaust) and Missionaries.  :-)