family night.

So we decided to have family night last night and we started out with the best intentions!  

The plan was as follows:  dinner together, prayer, scripture story, song, games, treat, get ready for bed.  Sounds pretty fun/simple right?  

Well, this is how the night actually went.  We ate dinner semi-together.  I bought this rotisserie chicken from Costco and was home at like 7:30 with it.  Stockton was hungry, but Zack wasn't getting home till 8:15.  Fine.  I didn't make Stockton wait.  He ate his chicken and was waiting for the rice that I didn't manage to have ready till like 8:20.  Zack and I started eating our dinners at like 8:30.  Stockton had his rice at the same time even though he'd finished his chicken almost an hour ago.  So dinner was a little unorganized.  Big deal.  

Moving on to prayer/singing/games.  One problem.  The house was a giant mess!  Toys COVERING the living room floor.  I'm trying to teach Stockton to clean up his toys so we told him that he needed to pick up his balls.  I told him I would help with the rest, but the balls were his responsibility.  He then threw a FULL BLOWN temper tantrum.  He was laying on the floor, balling.  All the neighboring apartments could probably hear this:  

"Stockton clean up the balls, it won't take long.  I'll help with the other toys." 

 "That's not fair!  Help me with the balls too!" 

"No, you need to learn to clean up messes when you are done playing.  Hurry and pick them up so we can have family night."  

"But it's too hard, there are soo many.  It will take sooo long" 

"Stockton just do it.  Look, I already finished my part.  See, that was fast!"  

"But I'm so tired." 

"Oh then are you too tired to have a family night treat?"

"OOOooohhh I just want you help me clean up the balls!"

"Stockton you need to do it yourself.  That was your part of the job."

"No!  I'm so mad at you!  You are so mean!"

This went on for like an hour.  Seriously.  Finally he gave in and did it. (took all of like 5 minutes)  Sure glad we had such a fuss over it!  By now, it's like 10 p.m. (past bedtime) but I had promised to have family night and a treat.  Well, we just hurried.  No time for games.  We ready a VERY short story.  Then, Zack was dishing up a small bit of ice cream for stockton.  He started crying again because we only had pink, white, or brown ice cream.  He wanted blue.  Zack was a great sport and whipped out the blue food coloring and mixed some blue ice cream.   Problem solved.  I tried to do a song.  I tried "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam", "I love to see the temple", and "Popcorn popping on the apricot tree."  Stockton then freaked out again and wanted me to stop singing!  Wow.  Fine.  I will stop singing.  After this it was like 10:30 p.m. and Stockton took a bath.  He then threw another fit when Zack got out his toothbrush because he wanted mommy to do it!  So I did.  Finally, after going potty, I tucked him in at 11 p.m.  Yeah, that late.  

It didn't go quite as planned, but we got through it.  Happy FHE!!