What do you value?

Each family has things they value and place a high importance on. In case you can't read Noelle's writing in the picture above, here are ours:

Miner Family Values

1. We Love God

2. Family First

3. We are Bucket Fillers

4. We Tell the Truth

5. We Do Our Best

and, a 6th one that has surfaced as a huge value since making the poster:

6. People are More Important Than Things.

The first one speaks for itself: our faith in God is our family's foundation.

Family First...we want our family and our home to be a place of peace, security and love. In order for that to happen, we need to feed our family and marriage by spending time together, with both immediate and extended family. This may mean making tough decisions on events, activities, and trips. But at the end of the day, we want to say we chose family over the busyness of the world.

We are Bucket Fillers...this came from one of our favorite books, "Have You Filled a Bucket Today?" by Carol McCloud. It's based on the idea that everyone carries around an invisible bucket, and we either fill buckets or dip into buckets, depending on our actions and words. We want to be known for being kind and for treating others the way we'd want to be treated.

We Tell the Truth...Noelle has been begging me to let her watch episodes of Hannah Montana on Netflix. I told her we could watch a couple of the shows and then I would decide if she could continue watching or not. Well, almost every episode is about someone lying to someone else and trying not to get caught, while also being as sassy and disrespectful as possible. I told Noelle she couldn't watch it anymore because we are a family that tells the truth and fills others' buckets. The show goes against two of our biggest values. The cool thing is, she understood why I was saying no and didn't argue or try to negotiate. Having these values stated and known makes decisions and boundary-setting easier and clearer.

We Do Our Best...pretty self-explanatory. It's important to us to have integrity and stay committed to the things we say we're going to do.

People Are More Important Than Things...this is one I'd been struggling to articulate until my good friend Sarah Jean stated it as something her family has on their values list. I LOVE this one. In a culture that markets status and stuff to kids in a way that makes them think that "more is better", we are hoping to teach them that people and relationships are worth exceedingly more than anything money could buy.