F.H.E.

F.H.E. What does it mean? Well, being raised in the church, we were all taught it meant Family Home Evening, but I have a few other ideas about what these letters stand for.

1. Five Hundred Excuses why it's not a good night, not a good time. Somebody's always too tired or too busy or too annoyed by someone else to have a nice family night.

2. Flippin' Hilarious Episodes like on this particular night where we had a nice little lesson on being clean and cleaning up after ourselves. And then we played Hide and Go Seek. Just one time. We live in 1500 sq. ft. and there's five of us, so after one round, we've run out of spaces to hide. But that one round is pretty fun. And then....the grand finale - the moment our 2-year-old couldn't stop talking about all night until we finally sat down to do it - the strawberry dipping in chocolate. I splurged a tiny bit and bought a little pack of three different chocolates to dip strawberries in. So we had a taste testing.

As usual, Chloe dipped her strawberry in chocolate and then closed her eyes, tilted her head back and rubbed her chocolate-covered strawberry all over her face and hair while she cooed. It's like...her little happy place or something. Anyone remember the scene from Billy Madison where Miss Lippy is dancing around alone in the classroom, humming and smearing mayo all over her face while the kids are out at recess? Well, Chloe enjoys that type of activity. She finds great pleasure in smothering herself in whatever we're eating.

So we all started laughing because it's pretty funny when she does it. Chloe always just stares at us all curiously. She doesn't understand what we're laughing about. So I grabbed my camera quick and snapped away - trying to capture the moment. Then I sat back and watched my children - enjoying our good time together. That's when I noticed something was missing. I had purchased a pack of THREE, yet there were only TWO types of dipping chocolate - the double chocolate delight and orange chocolate. The amaretto was missing. That's when I noticed something else was missing. I glanced about the room and...

There he was - hiding in a corner of the kitchen. I asked him what he was doing as I moved in for a closer look. He was slurping something down by the spoonful. That's right - the amaretto chocolate. Nice, honey.

Trying to find a lesson and activity to keep my husband, pre-teen and two toddlers interested for more than 2 minutes leaves me...

3. Frazzled. Haggard. Exhausted.