I read in the Ensign (February 2013 p. 12)  today ideas about creating a family culture.  It made me smile.  One of the things that I learned most quickly when I married Eric was that you can join a family but it takes time to become a part of the culture.  In fact the first few years were simply spent trying to keep the culture alive so the children could have memories that extended from before the divorce to after the divorce.  Even if the culture seemed foreign to me, it was theirs and it shouldn't be changed.  This meant playing "King" with our Easter Eggs, playing tricks on the Elders when they were over for dinner, eating buffet style, and Mexican food every day.  It meant giant messy sleepovers watching movies every weekend the kids were with us.  It meant that picking Nerf bullets out of boiling spaghetti sauce should just be considered normal and that I should feel gratitude when someone duct taped my broken picture frames together after they were nailed by footballs.    Over time I must admit there were things that I changed.

I hated drinking out of plastic cups so they disappeared and were replaced with glass.  Eric moaned relentlessly when this change was made, positively sure his children would break them all in months and that I would be upset. (Now plastic certainly made sense when you have 8 young children around the house, I don't fault Eric and his ex for using them at all.) I just prefer glass.  For the first few years, we did have to replace our glasses every so often but I tried to remember not to get mad when the glasses broke.   Slowly over time I convinced Eric to occasionally put food on the table in nice bowls rather than buffet style.   But these are small things compared to the most important cultural aspects of our family that endure even to this day.

I love sitting down in the evening and reading scriptures with my family.  Although rushed in the mornings and sometimes a bit sleepy in the evenings, family prayer makes me feel as if I am sending my children into the world or to bed with a bit of a safety net.  Having a family testimony meeting every few months helps us see how we have each grown and learned.   Our latest trend to spend time together is playing Monopoly in the evenings before bed, it is a loud, crazy, game filled with laughter.  As I read the suggestions it occurred to me that it seems almost impossible not to create a family culture.