For Christmas…2009…my husband bought me this.
And so began our tradition of watching an episode of Little House on the Prairie every Thursday night.
We pull out the trays, have a picnic on the floor and somewhere along the way,
the kids renamed it: “LHOTP night”
Because that’s oh-so-much-easier-to-say???
This morning, one of the first things they mentioned at breakfast was:
“Tonight is LHOTP night!!!”
And like them–I look forward to that time every week.
For me–it brings back so many memories of watching the same series as a child.
For them–it’s all new–and they love it.
Now mind you–we are pretty stingy with our television viewing…so I’m not sure they’d actually care what we were watching. But they’ll join us in endearing acceptance of Mr. Edwards. They cringe when Laura gets herself into trouble. And they’re all shouting with whole-hearted approval when “mean old Nellie Olson” gets what’s coming to her.
Colson figured out that if we watch one episode a week, we’ll finish the whole series ”by the time (he) gets married”.
But we double up on some weeks because I’m just as bad as they are– and will join the kids in trying to convince Jason that we have time for “just one more”.
Buying the whole series at once is quite spendy, but considering we purchased weekly-entertainment-bonding-times for the next decade…feels very worth it. You can also find smaller sets if you want to just give it a try.
I love seeing how involved the kids get and they would all tell ya that I cry in pretty much every episode. The first few times, they were probably watching me more than the show…but they’re past that now…
In all honesty–this series has prompted some incredibly deep conversations with the kids…
About poverty, death, taxes, hard work, drinking, race, pride, family, courage, sacrifice, friendship, stealing, danger, temptation, wisdom, drug use, lying, birth, faith…
And almost every week…about God.
It’s not perfectly biblical by any means (and we’re only a few seasons into the set)…but so far it has been very worth the time spent.
Some close friends of ours are about a season behind us and it’s fun to know we’re working our way through the series together. We’ve also loaned sections out to a few other families…that might be a great option too if a couple families wanted to purchase the set together.
Just thought I’d share, because it might be something your family would enjoy too?
And now you know what our crew will be doing tonight around 6:30pm.
The scene below is from the episode where Nellie lies about her legs being paralyzed and Laura feels guilty because her horse caused the accident. Nellie of course, capitalizes on Laura’s guilt until Laura figures out Nellie has been lying the whole time.
Our boys watched the following scene about 12 times:
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