Sunday Mornings

Problem:  I spent all of Sunday morning laying in my bed trying to ignore the fact that I had a family.

If you liked this post, be sure to check out my post about my course Family Routines:

There is nothing wrong with a lazy day in bed.  It’s glorious, in fact.  One of the weirder parts of the LDS church (at least to other faiths) is that you are assigned to a ward and they tell you what time you will meet at.  So, a ward might meet at 9 am one year, and then at 1 the next year.  Each time has it’s people that prefer it, and while I mainly prefer morning church, I have grown fond of afternoon church because it forces us to have some time together.

Of course, when I was primary president, I had meetings, but that ship has sailed and I’m free as a bird now. 🙂  Having meetings in the morning certainly puts a rift in that road, but I digress…. either way, no meetings for me. 🙂

So, we usually all sleep in til’ around 9.  We have a rule at our house that in order to watch TV you have to have your room clean.  For the most part it works.

At 9 we have a family meeting. This is one of highlights of my Sunday Morning system.  At this meeting, we review the calendar for the week and what each person has going on.  That way, when the kids later say they have no idea I was working that day, I can remind them we talked about it at that meeting.  Glorious.  We also read cartoon scriptures (the same book of scripture that we are studying in Sunday School that year).  I tend to talk about principles when we read scriptures together as a family, but the cartoon scriptures solidify scripture stories a bit better…  We also review Family Home Evening assignments.

Then, each person has a “day” we rotate aroaund the table so everyone gets every 5th week at our house. That person gets to pick what’s for breakfast (within reason), we try to have a really big and exciting breakfast. I love breakfast food, so this is  good time to pull out all the stops.  After breakfast we usually have time to play a game together (again, picked by the person whose “day” it is) and then it’s off to get ready for church, maybe have a little snack, and out the door.

The key is actually having a little time together.  Our family doesn’t really get that time together, and I know that’s only going to get worse.  I know that callings and other meetings get in the way of this big plan, every now and then, but for now this works for us.  It’s easy to just spend a lazy morning, each in your own zone not paying attention to each other, but I think that making an effort to do things together, will pay dividends in the end.

One of my other systems is making sure my quiet bag for Princess P is packed and ready to go before church.  Do you have any systems you use to help make Sunday the day you’re hoping for?  Comment below or share them in our Facebook group!