Scripture Reading Motivators

Yes, I know I have a lot to catch up on.  Camp Zarahemla, Valentine's Day, our anniversary, etc.  But before I do that (in a day or two, hopefully, maybe tomorrow, eh, who knows?) I'd like to tell everyone what is keeping us going on our scripture reading this year.  I figure if it's helping us, maybe it will help someone else.

One of the big reasons for documenting this, is that last night Brian and I went on our anniversary date, and we didn't realize that we'd be out as late as we were.  When we got home, the kids were already in bed, and we realized, "We didn't have family scripture study today!"  And that's actually a big deal now, because our stake presidency has challenged us to feast on the scriptures every single day, and we've taken that challenge very seriously.  Plus, I know that we have to read every day, because once you miss a day, it becomes so much easier to miss more.  Up until yesterday we had read every day for the entire month of January, and all of February so far, and we're really proud of ourselves.  (Yea, us!)

So I was thinking about it today, and trying to figure out a way that missing scripture study doesn't happen again, and then become more regular until we're not reading at all, and the thing that came to mind was those signs they have in factories saying how many days it's been since an accident or injury.  So I copied those.  I got out a small picture frame and a white board marker, and we're going to count the days that we've had consecutive scripture study as a family.  The plan is to make it cute with a scrapbook paper background and some vinyl saying, "days that we've read the scriptures," but the cute-ifying of things doesn't always happen, and that's okay.  Right now we just have a big "1" in the frame.  (Yea, us!)

The other things that we're doing, and I may have mentioned this before, are specific jobs for each of the kids to do to keep track of our scripture reading progress.  Alyssa marks an "I read the Book of Mormon" chart from Sugar Doodle, Ethan marks off the date on a calendar (and he was quite upset when he couldn't cross off the 18th), and Marcus puts a coin in a jar that we'll use the money from to go out for ice cream or something when we finish the Book of Mormon.  Sometimes it's a penny, sometimes it's a quarter, or anything in between.  We'll see what we have when we get to the end.  And for my personal study I'm using a chart I put together on ldsscripturetools.com, where I put in the date that I want to finish the Book of Mormon and it calculated how many chapters I need to read each day and made a chart of which chapters I need to read on each day.

I guess the most important part of this post is my testimony that I've noticed such a difference in the spirit of our house, and definitely in my attitude since we've been reading the scriptures regularly.  I love the Book of Mormon, and we've all learned so much in the last month and a half, and I'm really really excited to see what growth happens in all of us as we continue to read and study as a family.