He got a job

Summer is here and that means this kid has a little bit more time on his hands.  I thought it would be a good idea if he found himself a summer job.  Quite a few of his friends work at Burger King up the street, so Taylor decided to join them.  Doesn't he look thrilled?  Actually I don't think he is dreading it, he just didn't want me to take his pix.  This is all that he gave me.

  I told him this would be an excellent opportunity to learn what he doesn't want to do the rest of his life.

Owen and the Giant Cabbage

Last April, Owen came home from school with a baby cabbage and growing instructions.  Included in the instructions were more instructions on how to take pix of the cabbage and send them in, in order to get your name put in a drawing for a 100k scholarship.  Owen was all gung ho about growing a giant cabbage, but really had no idea what a scholarship was.

So we planted it and short of telling Owen to go and water it on occasion, it has been left alone.  Today we harvested it.  It is big!  14 lbs. big.  I took a pix of him and will send it into his teacher.

What do you do with a cabbage that big?  Give it to the chickens, of course.  It took them all day, but they ate almost the entire thing.  That's about a 1lb a cabbage per chicken.  Wow.  I wonder what their eggs are going to taste like the next few days?

Finally!

Chasey has been waiting for his tooth to fall out for like....forever.    Well, actually it didn't fall out.  After wiggling it for about a month, the dentist had to help it out.  It was hanging on for dear life!

An experiment

We have been having a little too much arguing, finger pointing, name calling and yelling in our house lately.  Maybe it is because it is summer and we are all seeing a bit more of each other.  Maybe it is because everyone is getting less sleep.  It is probably a combination of both.  Who knows, but I am not very happy about it.

The other day, Owen, out of the blue suggested an idea on how we could reduce these kinds of conversations in our house.  I liked the idea, so we have given it a shot.

Each person (including myself and Scott)  gets a cup with $6.00 worth of quarters in it.  Everytime a parent catches a kid doing certain things (we talked about specific behaviors), they take a quarter out of the person's cup that was yelling (for instance) and give it to the person that was being yelled at.  At the end of July whatever is left in your cup, you get to keep.

Now, there are some obvious faults with the system right off the bat (tattle telling, provoking, both kids at fault etc.), but as we are sorting and tweaking the faults I have noticed that the system is working quite well.  The boys really don't want to lose their quarters and are having second thoughts before they fly off the handle.   So, we continue on....

We hit the ground running

We started the summer off with quite the schedule.  I didn't really plan it that way, but as obligations started showing up, I decided at one point to cram them all in during the first 2 weeks of summer and get them all over with. Let's just rip the band aid off at once and then have a more relaxed summer.

So, we have fit in daily swim lessons for Chase, daily swim team for Owen and daily drivers ed for Taylor.  Added a few doctor and dentist appointments and a couple church and soccer meetings to make things really interesting. 

I also started on our summer schedule right off the bat, just to make sure the boys get to moan and complain that this summer is going to be "terrible" because they have to do jobs.   I know.  What a miserable life they lead.

What I have slacked off on is bedtimes.  The boys have been going to bed really late and we are paying for it dearly with whining, crying and moodiness.  That is next on the list to address.

Bed Head

For some reason Chasey has decided he doesn't want to get his hair cut.  His hair naturally grows out instead of down and is stick straight.  It makes for a great combination in the morning.

6th grade graduation.

It's hard to believe he is done with Elementary School.  He's going to do great in middle school!