"Heavenly Father said we shouldn't work on Sunday"

This past weekend, Lloyd worked. He signs up to work typically 2 Saturdays a month and these days doing MRI that means 8-2. Except this Saturday he agreed to have them add on a stat case at the start of the day and the last appointment wasn't UNTIL 2 so he actually worked 7-3. The kids had a primary meet-the-teachers breakfast in the morning and then after that I wanted to take them on a bike ride, but Sheridan's bike had a flat so we determined to do something later when Dad got home and stay home and get some things done in the meantime.

I did the wash, worked on figuring out how to remove ads from our Beyond TV recordings, and straightened up the downstairs. Then I sat down for a while, but couldn't ignore the massive tree covered in decorations calling out to me from the living room so resolved to get that done once and for all. In the mean time, the kids had total leisure. Philip seemed oblivious of what I was doing at all and Sheridan peeked in once and quickly made herself scarce. I had a choice of getting the work done (because I really really did not want to do that at all, let alone by myself) or playing taskmaster and I opted to get something accomplished.

Later the kids went back and forth to a friend's around the corner and when Dad came home we loaded the twins and the 3 friends (siblings) up to go to the park for the 1 hour of daylight left and the day just got away from us so before I knew it it was Sunday and after arriving home from choir practice after 5PM, the reality of the kids having done nothing to help around the house, no chores, no putting away laundry -- NOTHING -- and facing a busy week with that start, I cracked the whip.

I really wanted the kids to see how much they could do in 15 minutes. I hadn't given them a time limit, just the things I wanted them to do and it should have only taken about that long, but Lloyd threw in a few things (he took the cleaning part very seriously) and that was after they stalled complaining they had to do anything at all. Sheridan brought out the big guns that "Heavenly Father said we shouldn't work on Sunday" so I let her know that he also said "Honor your mother and father" and if she'd been doing that, then we wouldn't be having this conversation.

It's not like we're perfect parents (no one would accuse us of that!) or bad, either. We all have our faults so if you want to call it that, my fault this weekend was "making my kids work" on Sunday. Of course, they have their own free agency to choose not to accept chore money for it on pay day. We have been reading the Book of Mormon together as a family and are in the process of setting goals together as a family for this year. We are trying.

But, I could not bear the thought of going into a week in disarray even if it meant breaking the complete and total peace that is our home on the Sabbath Day (yes, I'm kidding -- I have kids, remember?!). The Sabbath Day is a principle I had to master when I joined the church because the entire weekend had previously been open for errand running and going out to eat, things that are hard to get done when you work M-F, but setting aside the Sabbath really does help one put their life in order. Now that I am responsible for other beings to understand that concept and DO it, it's 2 steps forward, 1 step back, but I think the kids learned a lesson about working on Saturday and preserving the Sabbath day. We'll see.