families are forever and ever and ever and ever....

Yesterday Bill and I had a wonderful time at the temple.

We were able to do some sealing work, which means that we stood in as proxy  for those who are deceased and didn't get to perform the marriage sealing or children to parent sealing ordinances for themselves.  Bill actually had some family names!  It was very moving, there were some on the other side who accepted the work done.  The temple is such an amazing place, truly the cares of the world are left outside.  

We came home and found all the children alive and well, but the house was a mess.  I had gotten approximately 4 hours of sleep the night before and I was exhausted when we got home.  Bill had to go to the studio to get some last minute things done (getting back at 11:59!) and I tried to relieve the kids of Danni and Enoch for 4 or 5 hours by bathing them and playing games.  At 8:00pm I was gone, my eyes wouldn't stay open, so I went to bed.

This morning the house was no better off and the jobs I had asked the kids to do somehow got forgotten.  They had a root bear float movie night and that took all their energy.

So at family council we brought up this problem about the house not being Sabbath ready.  The kids felt like us getting mad at them didn't help the spirit of the day (and they had a point).  So what should we do?  We thought maybe add on a weekend job or ground them, but they felt differently -Here are some of the answers they gave:

"Speak in a calm slightly higher pitched voice that shows your disappointment in us so we feel incredibly guilty and awful about letting you down."

"I think you should spank us, something quick , you know- smack us around." 

"We should give mom some foot rubs for having to deal with it all."

While we greatly appreciated their suggestions Bill and I decided to try better planning on our part so that we could orchestrate the Sabbath preparations better.  We also thought that we would try to go by the spirit and take each situation case by case.  Jobs or groundings will probably be the main consequence though...I'm liking the foot rubs, so maybe a few of those too:-)