What's Obvious

Hi Friends!
I just wanted to share some thoughts...
The visiting teaching lesson this month was on "Standing strong and immovable in the Faith" Sis. Beck commented on how we need to do the most essential things first. (She had a list of eight things, see this month's VT message in the Ensign). One of them was family scripture and prayer. We used to be good at this. Every night, no matter what, even on vacation, we would have scripture and prayer. We've read through the Book of Mormon three times as a family. Lately I have gotten lazy and half the time we'll just have prayer, because by the time I "get around to it" it's "too late" or I'm "too tired" so I just have prayer with the girls and send them to bed.
Know what is essential to me? Doing the dishes after dinner. Because I can see them all messy sitting there. And the leftovers would spoil. And what if someone stops by and see my mess. And I don't want to have to deal with it in the morning. So I almost always rally the forces after dinner and we all spend 15-20 minutes doing the dishes and putting the food away.
So what is really more essential, dinner dishes or family scripture reading? Well, that's obvious.
So it occurred to me, what if someone could walk into my house and look around and say, "Wow, you haven't had scriptures tonight, have you? What a mess!" That certainly would motivate me to read the scriptures :) So my new strategy whenever I am tempted to send the kids to bed without our family reading (like tonight!) is to think about the dishes. I wouldn't leave my dishes all over the table, because it obviously needs to be done. How much more needed is our family scripture time, even though it's not so outwardly apparent. It is absolutely vital to my childrens' spiritual nourishment, and I (and Mike) are the only ones who can give this to them, they won't get it anywhere else. How vital is that!
Next I need to work on personal prayers with them. Should I still be helping kids at 7 (almost 8) and 10 say their prayers at night? I remind them now and then, but don't really follow up. I am hoping they follow my example, as they see me praying in the evening, but most of the time they are already in bed by the time I pray.
This parenting thing is exhausting!
Speaking of that, Katie and Liz are exhausting me with plans for the 8th birthday party. The theme keeps changing. Right now it's a music party where they play the piano and sing to their guests, LOL. And I'm making a butterfly and a ladybug cake, I've been informed.