Home is where warm circling arms go all the way around

I seem to have blogged a lot on Family Home Evening lately. Well, here's yet another. I love Mondays and Family Home Evening. I may not remember many specific FHE's growing up, but I sure remember the feelings around them.

Family Home Evening combines three of my favorite words in the English language. (I also love the words "Christmas," "shoes," and "travel." And "chocolate," but then we start getting into the realm of the cliché.)

----* Family: The source of my greatest joy and happiness. The lack of it was the one thing that kept Hawaii from being a perfect place.

That and I never learned to appreciate the muumuu other than for comedic value.

----* Home: No other word embodies comfort more than "home." Dorothy Gale had to travel on a tornado before she realized there was no place like it. I'm all about vicarious learning, so who am I to argue? Like the Primary song says, it's "where warmth and love abound." That doesn't apply to everyone; I'm lucky enough that, in my case, it does and always has.

----* Evening: My favorite time of day. The burdens of work seem to be erased the moment I walk through the door and give Mike a hug and kiss. Evening time is Our Time and I love every minute of it.

Two weeks ago, Mike and I had a great FHE. It was on family unity and started with an object lesson involving the a 500-year-old Inca fortress in Peru called Sacsayhuamán. (Side note: Say that aloud and tell me what it sounds like. It had us giggling all evening because apparently we're both still in 1st grade.) The point was that even though each stone is different, it doesn’t weaken the wall. In fact, the different sizes actually help keep the structure together and thereby accomplish their common purpose. To demonstrate that, we had a scavenger hunt for our activity. We had a list of 10 categories and we each had to find an object that represented that category. Some of the items were engagement, honeymoon, wedding, marriage, our strength as a couple, and our future together.

I won't bore you with all the details of who picked what and why, but here are a couple of examples:

----* For our engagement, Mike picked a Brian Regan CD because we saw his show in Seattle and, in general, we did fun things together each weekend. Also, on our first sort-of date, he loaned me a couple of Brian Regan CDs so that he would have an excuse to talk to me again. I picked a car because we spent so much time driving back and forth.

----* For our honeymoon, Mike chose the Lord of the Rings trilogy because we went to New Zealand. I picked a drawing of the ocean at sunset because, for me, it was about exploring new horizons at a place neither of us had been before.

It was fun to see each other's perspective on the same thing. I'm excited to go home and have another wonderful Family Home Evening. I feel so blessed to have a husband who is not only excited for FHE, but more than half the time plans for it and carries it out. And I'm grateful that we are establishing this tradition early in our marriage so that we can continue in our efforts to have a united, happy family.