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All work and no play? Fun on my mind

(This isn’t our family, but it’s sure fun! Click on the video to go to this video on YouTube.)

This year we’ve been working on having more fun as a family (no pun intended). I have seen and felt how important balance is in a family–to be sure that while we work, we enjoy working hard, and then that we stop working and take time to make happy memories having fun as well.

I am inspired by this description of Ezra Taft Benson’s childhood:

Each Saturday’s chores were done by one o’clock sharp. The family would then spend the rest of the day in fun activities. In fact their farm became a place for the youth of the community to met for fun. There were horse races, foot races, baseball, rodeos, swimming, hiking, picnics, bobsleighing, skiing, and skating. His dad even made a basketball court by rolling and packing the dirt down solid and putting up a basket at both ends of the court. The Bensons had the first record player in Whitney [Idaho] for dancing and listening to music. But, Ezra’s ost favorite activity was shooting a game of marbles. One year he started out with only ten marbles and ended up with over a thousand he had won so many times (Robison, Lynda Cory. Boys Who Became Prophets. SLC: Deseret Book Company, 1998, 74.)

Wow! I wish I could say we have done all those fun things over the years! Yesterday after we worked, Lane took Pete to a movie after driving all over town looking for a refrigerator box for a school assignment, I took a nap and then watched a movie with Sarah at home (ironing fabric napkins during party of it, LOL), Anna played with a friend, Eliza babysat, Julia hung out with a friend and worked, and Rebecca went to a birthday party. We all ended up watching the end of cupcake wars when we finally gathered at bedtime and turned in for the day. 4,185 miles away, Nate got up early, worked his heart out, doing 300 sit ups in the morning with his companion and then visiting investigators, members, and strangers all day until calling it a night.

When I was thinking about a photo for this post, I remembered a teeter totter from my childhood. One Saturday when I was maybe 8 (?), my sister, Debs (10), and our friends Marian and Pargie put together a backyard carnival and invited the whole neighborhood to come. We prepared for what (in my memory) seemed like weeks, and in the end we had about 3 people come. We had collected stuffed animals (for prizes–ticket redemption!) and set them up in a cardboard display case covered in front with plastic wrap, so you could look at the prizes to decide which one you wanted. The four of us had practiced an adaptation of a song from a musical, complete with 50’s style choreography, to perform in the empty garage as our stage. I know we rehearsed a lot, but I can’t remember if we got to perform it. We had a cakewalk, too. One of the star attractions at the carnival was an “acrobatic” show my friend and I had prepared on our homemade teeter totter (a wood plank on top of a wooden sawhorse). We were going along just fine until we lost our balance, and Pargie fell off onto her back, getting the wind knocked out of her. Pargie’s mom drove over in their station wagon to pick her up, and that was the end of the carnival.

But it was so fun while it lasted!

Good memories!

I think we need to build a teeter totter this summer….


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