Mike has a free PDF download of readings, called “Glory to God,” with scriptures taken from the Old and New Testaments for each day of the month of December. 

Eric explores the meaning of advent and the origin of advent traditions. Scroll to the bottom of the page for links to daily scriptures and musical recommendations. For the second, third, and fourth Sundays leading up to Christmas Eve, he includes “stirring anticipatory episodes known traditionally as the Annunciation to Mary, the Dream of Joseph, and the Visitation.”

Ardis, a Mormon historian, scanned sheet music from older LDS hymnbooks and periodicals to celebrate every day of advent. One of her blog readers then surprised Ardis and her readers by recording audio accompaniment for each of the songs. You can find both the sheet music and the audio files in this post.  This is a unique sort of advent that musicians will not want to miss.

And thanks to Alison for collecting and posting the following Christ-centered Christmas advent calendar ideas. They are all great options for bringing daily devotion into the Christmas season.

–Character of Christ Christmas Advent Calendar – Focus each day on a characteristic of the Savior as you read scriptures about Him.

–Christmas Tree Advent Calendar – Daily scripture reading is coupled with an ornament to put on a tree.

–Daily Goal Christmas Advent Calendar – Includes scriptures and music and goal-setting each day to bring you closer to Christ.

–Musical Christmas Advent Calendar – Music and scriptures together help bring the spirit of the season into your home.

–Scripture Christmas Advent Calendar – Yet another option combining scriptures and music.

–Service Christmas Advent Calendar – There’s nothing quite like focusing on service at this time of year. Of course, you could tailor the list to suit your family’s situation.

–Q&A Christmas Advent Calendar – This would be great for a family with young children — ask questions that help children think about what is happening in the scriptures.

The post More Christ-centered Christmas Advent Resources appeared first on Women in The Church of Jesus Christ.

©2009 Susan Noyes Anderson

The greatest joy in life is found

where love and loyalty abound.

What sweeter sight…what dearer sound

than all the family, gathered round?

For the Andersons, reunions are not only a wonderful thing; they are essential to the health, strength, and unity of our family. The approaching holiday season is one of my favorite times of the year because it guarantees that my immediate family will be together for Thanksgiving and Christmas, with my extended family joining us en masse for either one or the other. Our celebrations are legendary (in our own minds!), and we have established many traditions that we value and cherish.

One of these is “circletime,” so dubbed by my children, who universally enjoy making fun of my various bonding whims. (I believe they were likening the experience to share time in nursery school, which was actually not far from right!) Having said that, this idea turned out to be considerably more than a whim. It’s been going on for about 15 years now and has morphed from a solely Christmas Eve activity to a Christmas, Thanksgiving, family reunion, and special event activity. As the name implies, the whole family sits, sprawls, or stretches out full-length on the floor in a circle. A brief, often poignant story is read, usually one that is written or found by me. The story ends with a thought-provoking and personal question, to be answered by every person in the circle. I wish I could tell you what a beautiful spirit this activity brings; I can absolutely tell you that it has increased our intimacy as a family, allowing us to know one another better. It has also made us more comfortable sharing our feelings and testimonies.

Because Christmas and Thanksgiving come but once a year, we also look forward to our annual family reunion at the beach, with the extended family invited. For the past dozen years, we have stayed in the same place and done essentially the same things every summer, adding to the sense of tradition this vacation brings.

Once children have grown and flown the nest, reunions are the best gift you can give each other. Email, phone, text, and even Skype are great, but nothing fills the heart and replenishes the spirit like face-to-face, one-on-one fun with the people you love most. As a Mormon woman, I believe that families are eternal. As a mother and grandmother, bringing my family together means everything to me.

The post Gathering the Family: Family Reunions, Family Traditions appeared first on Women in The Church of Jesus Christ.

We have a family tradition that started because I needed one day of the week to be a no-brainer when I was planning menus.  One day a couple years ago, I decided that Fridays would be pizza nights at our house.  We like to make pizza together, and since not all of our kids have adventurous taste buds yet, we usually make more than one kind each time.

This night, we each made our own mini-pizzas.  I gave the kids a ball of dough and they helped roll it out and loaded up their own pizza with toppings.

After dinner, clean up is quick (one of the bonuses of pizza night!) and then we either play games or hunker down in the family room to watch a movie together.  This tradition started just because I was trying to simply our life and has become something everyone looks forward to each week.

The post Family Friday: Pizza Night! appeared first on Women in The Church of Jesus Christ.

Saturday is a special day at our house. My kids call it “the day Dad stays home from work to play” day.

We try to get out every Saturday for a family activity.

Sometimes we go hiking. These pictures were taken while hiking in Yosemite, CA last summer.

My kids are always looking for bugs and animals to catch while on the trail. One time, my daughter caught a lizard.

Another favorite place to go on a Saturday is the beach. Here is my husband doing his best Indiana Jones whip crack with a piece of kelp he found on the beach.

What a find!

Babies love the beach.

We always seem to amuse the locals.

Sometimes, we go to museums. In these pictures we were visiting the California Academy of Sciences. It is a very kid-friendly museum. I cannot recommend taking a young family to a King Tut exhibit or a fine art museum. When we tried to expose our children to culture and art, my four year old daughter kept exclaiming loudly, “This is soooooo boring.” while rolling her eyes. So, we stick to museums that are geared to the 8 and under crowd now. Maybe we’ll try the fine art museums again in a few years.

Other Saturdays, we stay home and craft. My husband is a great crafter. He made stained glass hearts and flowers for all of his girls on Valentines Day. My daughters love to paint.

We love mini trips together as a family. We pack picnic lunches or find local foods to try. We try to keep a flexible agenda in case we find something cool along the way that looks even better than what we had planned. We always keep a sturdy stroller, sweatshirts and diapers in the car because we never know where the fun will take us!

Family trips can be a lot of work for parents, but my husband and I always find we smile more on Saturdays than any other day of the week.

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For more Family Friday posts, please click here.

The post Family Fridays: Family Fun appeared first on Women in The Church of Jesus Christ.

I have three young daughters whom we are teaching to pray. We pray every night at dinner time and my girls often squabble over whose turn it is to pray because they both like the post-prayer praise from their parents. We like to fawn over the little details they remember to pray about like potato bugs in the garden or the hilarious parts like asking in prayer for “the food to taste better than last night.”

One night last year at the dinner table my three-year-old demanded to give a second prayer after her six-year-old sister had already blessed the food. I consented that a second blessing on my cooking was never a bad idea so our three-year-old launched into a very long prayer that was hard to follow. At one point, we all thought we heard her say, “Amen” so we all said our amens too and looked up. Well I guess we all said “Amen” before she was good and done because she started yelling, “NO Amen! NO Amen!”

My six-year-old, not fully understanding her younger sister’s plight said, “No problem, we can say A-girl instead of Amen.”

And I had to raise my hands up into a Touchdown signal and laugh my head off. My husband and I caught each others’ eyes and we smiled to each other, knowing this story was bound to make it into our family history book.

After a good long laugh, my husband and I explained to the girls that we say “amen” to close a prayer to show our agreement to what was said during the prayer. We have since had many more lessons on how to pray during Family Home Evening or during our nightly prayers, but I will never forget my daughter’s humorous misunderstanding of the word “amen.”

The post Family Fridays: Amen, Sister! appeared first on Women in The Church of Jesus Christ.

Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.

Family vacations can fall under “wholesome recreational activities.” Does your family go on vacations (holidays)? If so, what are some of your family vacation traditions? Does your family visit the same place on a regular basis, or do you vary your location?

If you don’t go somewhere away from home (sometimes called a “staycation”), what kinds of “recreational activities” does your family enjoy together?

How do vacations and recreational activities bring your family closer together?

You can read responses from Mormon women below in the comments section.

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*If you would like, please send us photos and stories of your family vacations. This can include great memories and funny or spiritual experiences. Please email them to us at ‘mormonwoman’ AT ‘gmail’ DOT ‘com’.

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For articles at lds.org about family traditions and family fun, see the following:

Having Fun as a Family

More Smiles Per Gallon: Ten Ways to Make Family Vacations More Fun

See “Finances and Family Fun” in this Random Sampler for one family’s creative idea for an alternative plan for a family vacation when they were on a limited budget

The Power of Laughter

The post Family vacation (or “staycation”) traditions appeared first on Women in The Church of Jesus Christ.

Family Home Evening is a night when your family stays home together and has a little meeting. We do it on Sundays or Mondays.

We have a chart that tells each member of the family what their job of FHE is. The chart does not need to be fancy. See ours below.

One person conducts. Tonight it was Macey. She said, “Welcome to Family Home Evening” and then told us what everyone would be doing for their FHE job.

Logan was in charge of leading the song.

Dave was in charge of the lesson.

The children were in charge of listening to the lesson. Because I have little kids, I keep the lessons short and sweet. Just a little Bible story or something like that. It is hard for them to sit still for too long. See the pictures below.

Tonight we talked about Daniel and the Lion’s Den.

Sometimes the kids have random comments and questions. Those are my favorite parts because they often lead to gospel discussions and teaching moments. So, I don’t go crazy on preparing a lesson….. something good comes from whatever I do.

After the lesson, we moved to the kids’ favorite part.

The games!

Our FHE game portion of the night typically includes one of the following games:

Duck, Duck Goose
Mother May I
Red Light, Green Light
Hide-and-Go-Seek
London Bridge
Ring around the Rosy

Tonight we played Duck, Duck Goose

Lexi helped with the treat and put sprinkles on everyone’s ice cream.

Then we ate it.

And that was the end of our FHE!

I know it makes a difference in our family, so I love having Family Home Evening. I think it makes us more unified as a family, and gives us the opportunity to discuss important “life” topics.

Now please share what you do for FHE with your family!

*This post and all pictures were used by permission from the author.

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