10 Days of Gratitude- Day Five

I never ever thought I'd be grateful for kids hating bedtime.  Ever.  And then tonight happened.  General Conference Sundays are always really hard on the kids, especially our active Noah who needs to get in a nice long run in order to get out all his energy.  Energy that when misplaced, is usually directed towards teasing, super loud singing, jumping on things or tormenting younger siblings.

For him, it is probably super fun.  But it is the opposite for Brad and I.  Brad invited him on a walk, to curb some of his energy, but he resisted.  I insisted he help me clean the house when he started to get out of control, but none of it seemed to help when bedtime rolled around. (Although I did have a clean dining room to show for it, which was nice)

We turned the lights off early and told funny stories in the dark per Brad's request.  It was actually really fun.  But when we left the kids room, it was quite a struggle.(This time with Amalie)  About fifteen minutes later, Noah came into our bedroom, telling us how upset he was about having to go to school in the morning, that it was just so boring, he couldn't handle it anymore.  In crept Amalie behind him.  Normally, we send them right back to bed, but for some reason, this time we didn't.

We parents love spouting off about how we know how our kids feel and we used to feel the same way and now we see the beauty of life and such and such.  It was funny, because normally when we go into lecture mode, Noah hits the road, but because the only place to go was back to bed, he stayed and actually listened.  Quite fun for us as parents to have a listening audience.  We chatted for quite awhile about the beauty of opposition and of working hard and feeling satisfaction in accomplishing something hard. 

I really enjoyed myself.  And the kids did too.  I walked them back to bed and Brad and I laughed about how willing they were to listen to us, and Brad remarked that we should send them to bed super early every night and let them come into our room for a nightly "lecture."

Oh fun stuff.  What a fun day to be able to say that I'm grateful my kids will do anything to stay out of bed!