This might look like a silly vase of fuzzy balls, but for 5 months at our house it became a very important part of our family! I thought a lot about this and tried so hard to make it a meaningful expreience for our family. I was really feeling like we needed to have a greater focus on service. I was also feeling like we needed to be more accountable for our family scripture study, family prayer and temple attendance! So..the fuzzy balls came into play! We had a Family Home Evening and talked about all of these things. We decided each night at family prayer we would go over the day. We could put 1 fuzzy ball in for morning family prayer, 1 for nightly family prayer, 1 for family scripture study, 1 for going to the temple and 1 each for answering the question "What have I done for someone else today?" We would count them up at the end of the month. Each fuzzy ball was worth 25 cents!! Our goal was to see how much money we could earn by the end of May. This money was to be spent for activities during our trip to Hawaii in June. The kids understood that if we didn't earn any money, we wouldn't have any money to spend in Hawaii!! It didn't work perfectly...these plans never do...but it worked well! We earned almost exactly what we needed to have to do the activities we wanted to do in Hawaii.
The most important part of this whole experience was getting the chance to reflect back on your day and see what you were able to do for someone else. I LOVED hearing the things my children did each day. They were usually small, but it got us trying to look for opportunities.
We just might have to bring the fuzzy balls back again sometime in the future!!
