Sunday, June 29, 2014

He Works Hard for the Toy

Kinsey has spent the last year getting educated at BYU and is spending the summer at home with us.  She has decided that we are too soft on Carson, that he is learning bad habits, that we are enablers and we need to shape up before we ruin him!!  So, I took a few minutes from my solitaire game and bonbon eating to create a job chart for him.  He was trying to earn money for these two guys:


We set up a chore chart that looked like this:


Look at all those stickers he earned!  Each box was worth a quarter.  We forgot to add enough boxes for tithing and tax so he had to earn extras.  That kind of annoyed him a little.


We tried to think of the bad habits that we wanted to change.  For instance, he likes to come up and smack people on the behind.  He does that because we smack him on the behind when we do things like send him to his room for his pjs at night.  Do you ever do that?  "Go on upstairs and get your pjs, Carson!" and then send him up the stairs with a gentle spank?  With most children you can do cute things like that at home and they know better than to do them out in public but Carson has a pure spirit (that we may or may not have corrupted a teeny bit) and sees nothing wrong with smacking perfect strangers on the behind as they walk past him.  I watched (with a little bit of horror) as he smacked someone on the behind at church as he was going into Sunday School.  Luckily, the man was nice about it and just turned around and gave Carson a high five.  By the end of the week, when one of us (me) would smack his behind he would say "no mommy...no spanking!" and I had to apologize, so really...it was my bad habit we were trying to break.

Another bad habit that he has is sticking his tongue out at people.  We put the general "Be Nice" on the chore chart.  He is quickly repentant when he realizes he makes a mistake and says "Sorry!" so he did great at earning a sticker for that every day.

He worked hard all week, although looking at the chart, I see that we kind of dropped the ball a little bit on Tuesday and Wednesday.  We actually started the chart on Friday so we did well on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday and Thursday.  Mostly thanks to Kinsey and Emily. They are much better at being the mom than I am.

On Friday he had earned enough stickers to go shopping.  We headed out to Target.  Carson insisted that we use a cart and also that he get to push it.  I had to apologize to a few people that he nearly ran over in his excitement to get to the toys.


See that cart on the left side of his face?  He ran her into the clothing.  Oops!
We finally made it to the toys and horror of horrors, they did not have the Power Rangers that he specifically wanted.  I tried to talk him into the green or blue one but nope, he wanted those two red one.  We tried to talk him into something else but he only had $15 and everything he wanted was in the $40-60 range.  He just did not understand why he couldn't just get whatever he picked out.





He had a great time playing with everything.


He loved looking at all of the large action figures.  The funny thing is, he loves the small ones better.  We have gotten him a few of the larger ones and he never plays with those but his little ones he plays with until the limbs are falling off.  We have had to duct tape a few arms and legs on his favorites.

Spiderman always loses his head in our house.
I was starting to worry that we would spend the rest of our lives in the toy department at Target but he finally agreed to go to Walmart.  I actually said a prayer before going into Walmart that we would find his toys because I hate shopping and the thought of having to go to any more stores was giving me a headache.

Luckily, the Walmart had the Power Rangers of his dreams.



Now, we get to start all over again.  Being a responsible parent is exhausting!!  Maybe I can talk him into an ice cream for his reward this week.

Friday, June 20, 2014

Bad to the Bone - the Sequel

Gary and I try to go walking every morning.  We are slow walkers.  For instance, one morning this guy was slowly walking (in flip flops, I might add) to the mailbox not even breaking a sweat and Gary and I, who were walking as fast as our legs would carry us, could not catch up to him to save our life.  See...slooooowwwwwww.  We consistently walk though, so I guess that counts for something.

This morning, half way into our walk, I gasped and said "Jared is supposed to be helping out at an Eagle Scout project this morning!"  So, we started walking faster so that we could get home in time to get Jared where he was supposed to be.  After a few minutes, Gary said "Boy...you are really hustling!!" and I said "I knooowwww....and it's killing me!!"  Really though, we probably looked like two very slow turtles walking down the street.

We decided that if we wanted to make it home in time we would have to take a shortcut but as we got to the shortcut there was orange tape over the entrance to the bridge with a sign that read "Sidewalk Closed".  Gary kept walking towards it so I pointed the sign out to him and he said "Oh, I know" and kept walking towards it.  I told him we couldn't possibly keep going because the sign said it was closed!  He kept going and then STEPPED OVER THE ORANGE TAPE!!  

I said "can't you read the sign?!  It says "SIDEWALK IS CLOSED!"  He reacted by holding down the orange tape and offering a hand to help me over the tape.  I said something like "you are leading me astray and I am probably going to get hauled off to jail!"  He assured me that we would not be hauled off to jail..."we might be run over by a backhoe but we won't be hauled off to jail."  Oh...that makes me feel better.  Then he started giving me a lecture about how sometimes it's better to follow the spirit of the law then the letter of the law.  I'm pretty sure police officers don't care about the spirit of the law but that didn't seem to phase him.

He kept walking and then we saw the workers and I said "GARY....THERE ARE PEOPLE THERE THAT WILL SEE US BREAKING THE "SIDEWALK IS CLOSED" LAW!"  He decided to kill them with kindness and said "Good morning!" like it was no big deal that we were trespassing on a closed sidewalk.  As he walked, he kept apologizing for the angst he was causing my "you should never break the law" spirit.  

We got up to the walkway to our street and there was more orange tape there.  I said something like "Ummm... now we're trapped between the orange tape and the backhoe!" and he stepped over the orange tape again!!  Don't worry though, his chivalry is not completely dead because he again offered a helping hand to get me over the tape.

By that point, my heart was racing and I complained about him leading me down the path of destruction and he said "Don't worry...you're bad to the bone...remember?!

I'll probably start pulling the tags off of mattresses again.  Oh, and just in case you are wondering, Jared made it in time.  I guess it pays to be bad to the bone.


Saturday, June 7, 2014

Oh the thinks that you think....when you are cleaning a toilet

In our church, the members are asked to clean the building each week.  We are usually assigned a date to clean and since everyone is helping out, it ends up that we only do it a few times a year.  Today was one of our assigned days and as we figured out our family's schedule we realized that in order to do it, Gary and I would need to get up at about 6am.  I know that sounds early, but Gary and I have the annoying inability to sleep in past 6 (except this morning, of course....we were both sound asleep when the alarm went off).

Gary also has the annoying inability to manage time well and I have the annoying inability to handle lateness without having a nervous breakdown (I blame my dad for that).  As we have been given this assignment over the years, we have usually been late getting there and when you are late, you always end up cleaning the bathrooms because...ewwww....no one wants toilet duty so that's the last assignment taken.

On one of our late mornings when I was having a particularly bad nervous breakdown, I complained about him always being late and that I was going to get stuck cleaning toilets!  AGAIN!!  Gary just looked at me and said (very patiently, I might add) "Oh...I don't mind cleaning toilets for God."

He didn't even add "you heathen, wife, you!" at the end of his sentence.  He just casually and humbly said that he didn't mind cleaning toilets for God.  Well...that put my huffy little attitude in it's place!!

So this morning, we were the first ones there and we purposefully took the bathrooms.  They have a chart that tells you exactly what to do, in what order, and with what cleaning supplies and I have this annoying inability to clean out of order...it kind of drove Gary crazy a bit but we swept floors, we cleaned sinks, mirrors, and toilets, we dusted the air vents and we mopped the floors.

We discovered as Gary so aptly put it "little boys might not be able to always make it in the toilet but girls sure are messy, messy, messy when it comes to getting the paper in the garbage can."  I couldn't argue with him either because the boys bathroom was spotless (except for a few dribbles down the side and on the back of the toilet) but the girls bathroom?!  It looked like someone came in and threw all of the toilet paper and paper towels on the floor.  Shame on us girls for being so messy!!

I also discovered that there was glitter in the girls bathroom.  I guess we try to hide our messiness by spreading glitter everywhere.  The boys bathroom was sadly void of sparkles.  Gary thought that was a good thing. :)

I couldn't help but notice the difference in my attitude from a few years ago.  As I was mopping the bathroom floors the only think I could think was "Oh...I don't mind mopping the floors for God."

Will you think I'm weird if I tell you that I love cleaning my church building.  What an honor to be cleaning God's house for Him!  I love when I get to start my Saturdays like that!

I blame Gary for that.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

My Glamorous Life

From Thursday of last week:

I changed a tire today!!



Oh...and when I say "I changed a tire" what I really mean is that I stood behind my boys like the good mom that I am and documented the whole thing for all of our posterity to see while telling them to slow down because I can't take pictures that fast!!  I have my priorities, you know!!







All those years of scouts came in handy.


Just for posterity's sake...my boys thought that they needed to put the hubcap on the spare tire but I told them they didn't.  They argued with me so I called Gary and he said that we DID NOT need to put the hubcap on the spare tire!  Haha!!  I was right!!  Then I had to gloat for a few minutes while they cleaned everything up because I am nothing if not mature!



I'm glad I have these boys around to change tires for me!!

I've had a very busy day!  I also added sleeves to a dress...begrudgingly....but I did it.  I have learned that I kind of hate sewing.  The dress turned out lovely and modest which is hard to do when you are taking the sash of a dress and turning into two sleeves but I did it and conquered my fear of sleeve making!!  Not really...please don't make me do it again.  I got it done just in time to send it on a cruise with Kinsey.  Can you believe she didn't take me with her?!