One of our children used to ask, "Is it true?" when she wanted to tattle on her sibling, but not seem like she was tattling. She'd say, "Is it true that we can eat in the living room?" "Is it true that we don't have to do the dishes right after dinner?" "Is it true that we can watch TV downstairs?" After telling her she couldn't say that anymore, we haven't heard it in our home. This year, however, I want to hear it in our home a lot. I want my children to experiment on the word of God as Alma teaches in Alma 32. I want my children to know for themselves that the gospel is true and to test the principles.

In Alma 32, Alma says that we can compare the word to a seed. We need to plant that seed or the concept, nourish it, let the word take root, pluck the fruit, feast upon the fruit, and reap the rewards of our faith. How do we know if the word is true? How do we know for example that keeping the Sabbath Day holy is a true principle? We decide to try the word. We do activities on Sunday that bring us closer to Christ. Then we ask ourselves, do I feel better, do I feel closer to Christ when I keep the Sabbath Day holy? What are the fruits, the results of keeping the Sabbath Day holy? Moroni says, "But behold, that which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do good continually; wherefore, every thing which inviteth and enticeth to do good, and to love God, and to serve him, is inspired of God" (Moroni 7:13). After experimenting or trying a principle of the gospel, we also need to pray to God to see if that principle is true. "I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true: and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things" (Moroni 10:4-5).

My children don't have to rely on my testimony to know if the gospel is true. I don't have to rely on my parents' testimonies. Each of us can find out for ourselves by living a principle, praying about the principle, and looking for evidence that the principle is true.

A few principles that I've thought of that I want my children to know are:
Heavenly Father is real and He is my father in heaven.
Jesus Christ is real and He atoned for me.
Joseph Smith saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.
The scriptures are the word of God.
The Book of Mormon contains the truthfulness of the gospel.
Family history helps me and my ancestors.
Going to the temple brings me closer to God.
Living prophets and apostles teach us what we need today.
Marriage is between a man and a woman.
Families are ordained of God.
When I serve others I'm happier.
When I use my time wisely, I'm happier.
When I take care of my body by eating healthy and exercising, I am happier.
When I keep the Sabbath Day holy, I'm happier.
​
I know that keeping the commandments helps me to be happier. I want my children to know that too. I want them to be able to say, "It is true."

We have an exchange student from Norway with us for the rest of the school year. She is brave to leave her country and family and come to a new country and go to a new school and especially to live with a new family and learn their ways. Her brother was an exchange student in North Carolina and before he came, the exchange family sent him a guide to their family. I've taken that suggestion and created:

The Exchange Student's Guide to the Holm Home
or
How to Survive and Thrive in the Holm Home
or
How to Keep Mom Happy
Early to bed, early to rise
We get up early and go to bed early, especially Mom. We have scripture study on school days at 6:30 am. Children should be dressed by then and ready for school except for eating breakfast and making lunches. The high school students need to leave by about 7:10 am, so if you’re not attending family scripture study, you need to be up and ready to go with enough time to eat and make your lunch.
We go to bed around 9:00 pm.
Mom gets up between 5 and 5:30 am and goes to bed between 8:30 and 9:00 pm. If you want to talk to her, do it before 8:30 pm.
On weekends, we sleep in…until 9:00 am at the latest. If we have other plans, we’re up earlier. Teenagers may stay up later and Mom will set her alarm to be awake when you come home from a date or activity.
Work before play
Do your jobs first. Then relax or play. This means cleaning your room, making your bed, doing your homework, music practicing, your assigned room job. This also means doing your jobs before you use the computer to do homework or use your device.
Daily Personal jobs are:
Make bed
Clean room
Shower if needed
Clear own dishes and put in dishwasher
Clean up after snacks
Clean up personal belongings in kitchen, front room, family room
Do homework
Music practicing
Weekly Personal Jobs (usually done on Saturday):
Laundry—wash, dry, fold, and put away, wash sheets once a month
Super clean room (under bed, corners, closet, organize, change garbage, vacuum, dust if necessary)
Family job:
The children take turns doing dishes, either together or are assigned different nights.
Rotating jobs—there are four stations or sections.
Kitchen—Set table for every meal that week, feed and water the dog daily. Clean the patio door inside and out once a week, usually Saturday.
Front room/Family room—Have family members pick up their stuff once a day. Vacuum front room, family room, hallway, and stairs once a week, usually Saturday.
Laundry room—Straighten shoes and pick up fallen coats, backpacks daily. Sweep once a week, usually Saturday. Clean up the dog poop in the back yard once a week, usually Saturday.
Bathroom—Quick clean daily the upstairs bathroom. Weekly clean the bathroom on the level of your bedroom on Saturdays, sometimes Super clean as assigned by Mom.
Seasonal jobs: Children take turns mowing the front yard and back yard, weeding the garden, shoveling snow.
How it really works: Mom would like the jobs done every day. But…
When a child wants a privilege like doing the computer (even homework), the child needs to do jobs first and then let Mom know. Mom checks on jobs on Saturday or walks by room and sees it’s not done and gets mad at child.
The jobs and schedule are posted on the white board in the laundry room most of the time. They need to be done and marked off on Saturdays.
Good habits
Shower daily or as needed
Put on deodorant daily
Pray daily
Read scriptures daily
Brush teeth twice a day
Say please and thank you
Media Rules

1. Personal devices in basket when at home. Personal devices in basket by 9 pm, then the basket is kept in Mom and Dad’s room at night.
2. No internet after 9 pm.
3. No devices in rooms or downstairs.
4. Use devices after jobs, practicing, homework.
5. Music, games, texting for 30 minutes after #4.
6. Ask Mom if you need to text before #4 and for #5 and to use the computer and internet.

How it really works: The above rules are what Mom would really like. What really happens is that children and parents keep devices with them, but not downstairs, except teenage boy who doesn’t have a smartphone or ipod. He takes his phone downstairs sometimes. He also takes his Nook downstairs to play music, but no games. Mom and Dad use personal devices in their rooms, but not after 9 pm (hardly ever) and with the door open. Teenage boy sets timer to play games on Nook after jobs and homework are done. He plays music much more than 30 minutes, usually until Mom has a headache and tells him to turn it off.
These media rules help keep us safe from pornography, keep us from being isolated from one another, help us not waste time, and help us spend time on other worthwhile activities.
We want everyone in our family to be productive. That means limiting the time spent on the internet and personal devices.
We eat together.
We try to eat breakfast and dinner together every day.
Breakfast is at about 6:50 am.
The breakfast schedule looks like this:
Sunday-cold cereal
Monday-hot cereal like oatmeal or steel cut oats and toast
Tuesday-hot cereal and toast
Wednesday-cold cereal
Thursday-hot cereal and toast
Friday-muffins or eggs or pancakes or breakfast cake
Saturday-pancakes or waffles
Dinner is between 5:30 and 6:00 pm.
During tax season, January through April 15, we may eat earlier when Dad isn’t at home. We also can adjust dinner time depending on activities.
Lunch: Children make their own lunches. Mom will make a sandwich—peanut butter, tuna, or deli meat—if requested. There are chips and pretzels and fruit available. Bagels are available on Mondays.
Please don’t waste food. Don’t take what you won’t eat. Don’t make what you won’t eat. Don’t eat food in bedroom. Don’t leave dirty dishes in bedroom.
How it really works: Mom and Dad eat the hot cereal. Sometimes one or two of the other children will eat hot cereal. The children usually eat toast. Mom and Dad are constantly nagging the children to clean up their orange peels or apple cores in their rooms, downstairs, living room and popcorn bowls downstairs. Teenage boy is known to eat an entire box of whoppers in his room. But please don’t leave dirty dishes in your room.
We do church.
We are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and we do church, a lot of it. We worship Jesus Christ as the Son of God. We believe in His atoning sacrifice. We believe in modern prophets who teach us what God wants us to know to be happy in this life and to live with God in the next life. We believe the Bible to be the word of God. We believe The Book of Mormon to be the word of God. The Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ and contains the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We believe that Joseph Smith saw God, the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ and that the gospel was restored through Joseph Smith and that he translated The Book of Mormon.
We “talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins” (2 Nephi 25:26).
 That means that we do church a lot. Here are some of the times.
Every weekday morning we study the scriptures at 6:30 am for about 15 minutes.
Every Sunday we have a gospel discussion.
Every Monday we have Family Home Evening and are taught a gospel subject by a member of the family.
Usually on Wednesdays at 7:00 pm, the teenagers attend a youth activity.
On Sundays we attend church meetings for 3 hours.
We have family prayer twice a day, before breakfast and dinner. We have a blessing on the food before lunch.
We have personal daily scripture study and prayer.
We attend other meetings like choir, planning meetings for serving others and conducting meetings. We visit members of our church often.
We attend the temple. Mom and Dad try to go together once a month. Mom tries to go one or two additional times a month. The teenagers can do baptisms for the dead at the temple.
Monthly church dances for teenagers.
Seasonal church basketball for teenage boy.
Ward activities like Christmas parties or annual musical. The ward is our church family. It is a group of people in a specified geographical area who look out for each other.
Family activities
See: We do church.
We also play ping pong, board games, card games, work together, occasionally see a movie together or go shopping. We like to watch movies together at home.
And read. We love to read.
If you can’t say somethin’ nice, don’t say nothin’ at all.
Be kind. Don’t contend (that means don’t fight). Talk kindly to one another. Don’t make fun or criticize others.
One of Mom’s favorite scriptures:
“And ye will not suffer your children that they go hungry, or naked; neither will ye suffer that they transgress the laws of God, and fight and quarrel one with another, and serve the devil, who is the master of sin, or who is the evil spirit which hath been spoken of by our fathers, he being an enemy to all righteousness. But ye will teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness; ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another” (Mosiah 4:14-15).
How it really works: We like to tease each other. Dad especially likes to tease and remembers things to tease you about for a long time. This can be fun but we also need to be careful.
Keep the Spirit in our home
The Spirit is the Holy Ghost or the level of love and good feelings we have in our home. We feel the Holy Ghost when we are making good choices and when we are choosing virtuous things. This means talking kindly, using clean language, listening to songs with clean lyrics, watching movies with good messages and not too much violence, sex, or bad language.
In our home we don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. That means we don’t say, “Oh, my God.” Or “Oh, God.” Or “Jesus Christ” in a blasphemous or irreverent way. We don’t use bad words or cuss words. We’re happy to tell you if a word is a bad word or cuss word.
“We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things” (Article of Faith 13).
How it really works: Sometimes we watch movies or listen to music that have bad parts. We can all do better about turning something off that feels wrong.
We have standards.
Many of these standards are found in For the Strength of Youth.
They include things like waiting to date until you’re 16, dressing modestly, spending your time wisely, making good friends, being sexually pure, being grateful, creating a strong family. The standards in For the Strength of Youth are true principles. You have agency or the ability to be able to choose to follow those principles or not. You will be happier and get along in our family better if you follow those standards.
Do well in school.
Do your best and when you are having trouble, talk to your teachers, talk to us. Get help.
Follow directions.
What would make Mom the most happy is if the children promptly did their jobs and assignments as explained. Lying, deceiving, forgetting, and doing a part-way job are very annoying to the parents. If you have questions, please ask. If you can’t get a job or assignment done at the specified time, let’s talk about it.
Communicate
Please talk with us about your needs, desires, and scheduling activities. We will get to know you better and develop a stronger relationship as we communicate in meaningful ways. We know you are proud of your country and your family’s traditions. We want to hear about them and you. We are proud of our country and our traditions and culture too and yes, we are uninformed about a lot of things and biased as are you.
Mom likes to know the schedule. She doesn’t like surprises. If you need something from the store, please let her know ahead of time. If you want to schedule an activity, discuss it with the family to see if it will work in the schedule.
We want to have a great exchange experience with you. We want to learn from you and have you learn from us. Thank you for giving us the opportunity.
Love,
The Holm family

This week my son-in-law started his first real life job after graduating from college in aviation technology. He repairs airplanes and helicopters for a living. He has inspired my youngest son to be interested in airplanes and jets of the future. My youngest son draws airplanes, creates airplanes out of Legos, dreams about airplanes, and experiments with folding paper airplanes. On his second day on the job, my son-in-law sent a group text with a picture of the airplane he was working on. The responses were "Cool!" "How fun!" A picture of a desk and a computer, another family member's job, and then my son-in-law's sister sent a picture of her and her two young children with the words, "My job is the best."
I am inspired by her.

​Moms, let's go create, dream, and experiment. Our job is the best!