Rain Rain Go A Way...

Okay the rain is starting to drive me crazy. It has been raining since Tuesday. It has rained off and on for a lot of it but yesterday it rained all day. If it is going to rain like this everyday I wish that it would just rain at night. We have had baseball games canceled for it already. We are in desperate need of moving the lawn as well. I have less than two weeks too till my race and am really needing good weather for running each morning. I don't mind the rain but it is really chilly too and so it is not very fun. I am not a crazy runner either like some of my friends who get up at 6 am to run. I have a hard enough time getting up at 6:45 to do it so running in the rain is something that is hard for me.

I guess one advantage of the rain is that I seem to sit and read more. I actually read 5 books in 5 days. Well not in 5 consecutive days. I read them in a week but it took me one day to read each one. I read three of them in one weekend. Took a break and a few days later read another one and then on Saturday I read another one.

I read Annelise's favorite authors book. The author is Tracy Hunter Abramson. ( http://www.tracihunterabramson.com )She wrote undercurrents, ripple effect, and the deep end. She also wrote freefall and Royal Target. I think out of the five that I have read so far freefall was the most logical. They were good books. I wouldn't go crazy and tell everybody to read them but I enjoyed the fun fast reads. The crazy thing is that I read over 1000 pages in the last little while. Crazy.

Heidi wanted me to post what our Stake President has asked us to do as a ward and family. He challenged us to do this at our ward conference last month. He called it the "No Skips Program."
We are encouraged as a ward and family to not skip on the important things like scripture study and family home evening.

No Skips
Daily
Prayer-personal and family
scripture study-personal and family
repentance

Weekly
Family Home Evening
Renewal of covenants at the sacrament table
Church attendance
Propper Sabbath Day activities


Monthly
Home/Visiting Teaching (every home)
Attend Temple and keep covenants
Tithes and Offerings
Fast with a purpose

We have always been good but on the weekends we seem to not be so great about prayer and scriptures. We decided as a family to do this and it seems to be going great. We read our sciptures every night and make sure that we have family prayer. We still have a lot to work on but we are going to keep on trying.

We also were challenged in December as a Stake to turn off the TV. The stake President said that he still loves his college football games but really there is nothing great to watch on TV and that we could be spending our time doing other things. I agreed to some extent with him but I still had a few of the shows I liked and it was nice as times to just tell our kids to watch to TV. We didn't really follow this but a month a go I finally got fed up with the kids fighting and disconnected the TV. They no longer can watch TV. We still have it hooked up for movies but they have to ask to watch a movie. It has been wonderful. We have not watch one show on TV for a month. I don't know what is going on in the world either because I don't watch the news. It has been really nice. Do my kids still fight. You bet but it is nice to find time to do other things. I do sometimes want to go connect the TV so I can watch something but then I will think about it and I change my mind quickly. So we have turned into a no TV family. I don't think that I will connect it anytime soon either. We still watch movies and rent them but there is no TV during the day. I love it. I know that it is not for everybody but I am liking how well it how worked for us. So if there is a new show on TV and you want to know if I have watched it don't ask because I probably won't have heard of it.

I guess I just know that as a family we could be doing better at everything and I want to try to do that. I want my family to be stronger and to do the things we need to make us that way.

I guess maybe that is why I have time to read. Hmm no I just read easy books and I figure that if I get my house cleaned really quickly in the day then I can then read and do something for myself. We all need our time esepcially Mom's. Am I right?