I have a love/hate relationship with this time of year. I love the cooler weather, I love wearing jeans, sweaters and boots, and I love all the holidays. The one thing I hate about it is how early it gets dark. And with daylight savings coming, it’s only going to get earlier. This makes for hard evenings when my kids still have energy to run around, but it is super dark outside. They come in, we eat dinner and it feels like everyone should go to bed, but we still have 2 hours until bed time. So we have to come up with things to do. They are still a bit hyper and need to get energy out.
Last week after we had eaten dinner and the house was cleaned up, I could tell that both my husband and I were done with the day. The kids…not so much! Bed time was nearing, but was still an hour away. I was in my room folding laundry and a thought came to me to be spontaneous. I remembered how in our Family School lesson, for science we are learning about Astronomy, and that they wanted us to have a night of looking at the starts. It was a perfect activity to do before bedtime. I grabbed a couple big blankets to sit on, and we loaded up in the back of the truck. I turned my cool star gazer app on and we looked at the constellations. We live in a great place to look at stars, although this particular night it was a very full moon, so we didn’t get to see a lot of them.
As we sat there with four of our five children I could not help but get a little emotional. God has blessed me with so much. I have such an amazing family, and wonderful kids who I love so much. The kids asked questions about the universe, and taught their daddy a thing or two about astronomy. We talked about God and how this world was not created by accident, but that it was created by Jesus Christ, under the direction of our Heavenly Father. We started to talk about all of God’s creations and got talking about our human bodies and how amazing they are. I felt inspired that for our family scripture study we should watch a new Mormon Message. I looked one up on my phone and this was the one that I picked…..
I think it went perfect with our night, and that it was not by accident that we watched that video. I am truly grateful for all that God has given me. I feel very blessed every day of my life. 
This was such a lovely post. What a great family activity and teaching moment. I really like this video.
Blessings to all!
Kendra,
Hi, my name is Danyell, and I have stumbled upon your blog numerous times, from pinterest. Today, I actually started reading your posts, and not just the ideas for crafts and what have you, off of pinterest. I love everything you have to say. It’s so interesting, and inspiring. I just love it. I am so excited to find that you and your family are Mormon, as I just joined the church last Sunday, October 27, after being baptized on October 26. This honestly just adds to my testimony, because Heavenly Father has been reassuring me within the most recent weeks that this is the True Church. I just wanted to share that with you! Thank you!