trying to keep it simple...

When we get home from church we have lunch and quiet time. Quiet time for the boys is to pick a movie and watch it quietly on the couch. I slowly started noticing that the boys would tend to choose a movie that they had DVRed. This meant someone had to be really good and fast forwarding through all the loud crazy commercials, or we were having battles about movies that we own that are "good" movies...just not for Sunday.


About a month or so ago we had an FHE on what is appropriate for us to do on Sunday. We focused on what we should or shouldn't watch. We pulled out every movie that we own and asked the kids to help us decide which ones were appropriate. I was surprised that as we got into it the kids we decide that this or that movie wasn't a good Sunday movie because of the loud and roudy music, or because it had too many scary parts etc... It was nice to see them not just make quick decisions, but to really think about it. We ended up with a few in the maybe pile. We then went through that pile and voted. If it got enough votes it made it into our Sunday pile. Once we had gone through all the movies I took some white label stickers and my hole punch. I punched out little white dots. Now when the kids go to pick out a Sunday movie all they need to do is look for the white dot on the spine. If there isn't a dot...it isn't a Sunday movie. I love that we don't have to battle over whether a movie is okay or not any more and as for the DVRed movies...we just decided that we wouldn't watch any of them on Sundays...