Not a moment too soon, school is out for the kids here in PG.
How It All Began!
I hope the kids don’t expect us to make each day as great as this one was. Their Aunt Jenni had a huge hand in making the day great. School ended at 10:30, and by 11:00 they were all soaking wet from water balloons, slip ‘n slide, kiddie pool, and eventually entire 5 gallon buckets of mayhem. It was awesome. The video didn’t do justice to that part of the day simply because my recording was so poor.
The pool was fun, but the wind made it a bit on the cool side. Only Caitlin and Joshua were there with their cousin. I got a LOT of video from that. Some of it good, much of it boring.
This summer will offer lots of time at the pool, and lots of time working. I’ll do what I can to give video whenever I have time or energy to do so.
It is the last week of school and we have been all over the place with activities.
Gymnastics
Last night we attended the gymnastics “showcase” for Kristie, Charlee, Nikki, and Andrew at Patterson’s Soft Landing Gymnastics. I have never been to an event like this and it was great fun for me to see what the kids have been working on and learning this year.
I thought they all did great! Of course I may be biased. They all progressed quite far throughout the year and I am really happy for them. Kristie was even offered a spot on one of their competition teams, but since we are moving she isn’t taking the spot.
The highlight for the night, at least for me, was watching Kristie easily climb their rope. It took about 20 seconds for her to get to the top of their 25 foot ceiling. I was impressed. Any time I have picked her up I’ve asked if they ever climb the rope and she has always said no. When asked afterward why she always told me no when she had obviously climbed it so well she said, “We haven’t practiced until just last week. We got to try and I climbed up it.” It was just that easy I guess.
Dance Event
One of today’s activities was the end of year Dance Festival at the elementary school. This has been a tradition there since Julie attended. Each grade practiced and preformed a dance routine for a large crowd of parents.
I know this event is popular and expected, but I’d rather have skipped it. The music was low and hard to hear. The choreography was repetitive (which is expected for a large group of little kids). And I don’t particularly like large crowds.
The kids were just one among a sea of others. Because my kids are so short they were often hard to see in the group. It was as good an event as I’ve ever seen it be, but still not a “must see” for me. Julie probably feels different about it.
Little Red Hen
Following the Dance Festival, Nikki was also involved in a class play of The Little Red Hen. I took Andrew home instead of attending. Julie went and said it was adorable. She needs to get some GoPro practice though because there was nothing in memory despite her claims she had the whole thing recorded.
Paying Tribute to the Porcelain King
And just to make this week a little bit more difficult, we have had illness going through the family. It started with Andrew and Steven on Sunday morning. Both vomited and earned a get-out-of-church-free pass. Sunday afternoon, after church, poor JR had his turn right in the middle of a family movie.
That passed just fine and we thought by Tuesday we were all in the clear. Then right in the middle of the gymnastics showcase Steven had two more episodes: once right in the middle of the seated crowd, and then again as Julie was carrying him outside. She got him outside and five minutes later he stated he wanted to go back in. Julie said, “you can’t. You’re sick.” “I’m not sick, I’m happy :)!”
That was yesterday. Last night it was Charlee’s turn. Caitlin woke us sometime after midnight to tell us that Charlee needed new bedding. Lovely.
Today was Lagoon day for the middle school and Caitlin was early anticipating going for her first time. She left the house all ready to go. About 20 minutes later she was on the phone telling us that she was ill to and fighting nausea. So she missed Lagoon. She didn’t vomit at all today, but Lagoon would have been a bad place to test the fortitude of your stomach.
Can Summer Begin Already?
I am more then ready for the school year, and this week, to be over. We have more than enough activities planned for us over the summer to keep us busy. Family reunions, remodeling a house, pool time, fishing, moving, and hopefully a trip to Martin’s Cove in WY to visit some friends on a mission there. We have activities galore planned, so let the fun begin!
Caitlin and Joshua are earning money beginning a summer campaign to raise some dough. If you haven’t heard about it, please check out the link!
Good for them!
The kids, with a bit of encouragement, have decided to start earning their own money for the summer. They are only 14 (Caitlin) and 12 (Joshua) but have a pretty good understanding of where things come from. They realize we can’t just go into a store and get things without offering up something of value in return (money). And because Julie and I have never operated on debt, the kids know that they need to have that money in advance.
They know that if they want go to movies, buy games, etc, that it takes money, and that that money must be earned in some way; either by themselves or somebody else on their behalf. They don’t think that money magically appears or that the world owes them anything.
Thankfully they are willing to get out, do some work, and provide services of value in order to earn the money they want to spend. I think they are admirable.
Kicking them out of the nest?
At some point in time every parent must decide when their kids must start earning money for themselves, instead of that parent continuing to earn money on the child’s behalf. We are not at that point yet. I know that my parents took care of me long past the ages of Caitlin and Joshua. Julie and I will keep doing the same for ours.
We are still providing for all of their necessities. We buy them school clothes, food, and other necessities. They haven’t been cut off financially. But due to our recent losses we aren’t in a position to provide many perks. They are at an age where those perks seem like necessities and they would like more than just enough to keep them alive. So they have chosen to earn more.
Now there are obviously things that they can’t afford in advance that we are willing help them with. For example, we signed up all of the kids for swimming lessons this summer. We also bought a full season pass for the pool. For a family of our size you might imagine those cost a fair amount of money.
Caitlin and Josh both agreed they wanted to do those things and they were willing to pay their share of the cost. Rather than make them miss some of the summer trying to earn the money first, we covered the cost, they will pay us back, and they will get to enjoy the full summer’s worth of activities.
Drawbacks
I hope that none manifest themselves, but I have some concerns about kids earning money.
I’d hate for the kids to view all of our/their acquaintances as potential customers. I want the kids to be kind and friendly with people because they are good people (which they are!), and not because they see them as somebody they can earn a few dollars from. Being good people needs to be first and foremost.
I don’t want them to “learn” that life is all about money. It isn’t! It never has been for Julie and I and I don’t want the kids to think so. Money is a useful tool for providing things in life, but it isn’t the goal of life. You don’t get a gold star for dying with the most money or having the most toys. I want them to do this as a means to an end, rather than seeing money as the end itself.
This was a popular bumper sticker and T-shirt in the 80’sBut this more accurately reflects the truth!
I don’t want friends/neighbors/relatives to have a bad experience. They are kids, and if they mess something up I don’t want to have any bad feelings develop amongst people we know. I don’t expect this to happen and that problem could be handled with some customer service skills.
I don’t want people to feel obligated to support them. I don’t want them to resent being asked. If you want bread, please order it. If not, please don’t do so because of guilt. They need to learn to accept rejection as well.
I don’t want them to think that Mom and I aren’t willing to take care of them. Sure, we are expecting some financial hardship, but I don’t want the kids to think that they are a burden on us, or are the cause of the issues.
I don’t want them to ruin their childhood. They only have a few short years of youth. I don’t want this to take up so much of their time that they don’t have time to play with friends, enjoy the pool, go to movies, etc. I am still willing to let them be kids.
Your experiences
What have you seen or experienced? I would love to hear some stories about when your children first started earning money. How did it go? Did it change them? For good or for ill? How could YOU have done better? How did you talk to them or teach them?
By “entire family” I don’t suggest that we all ran. I don’t run at all. JR is just barely walking (but doing a fabulous job of it), and Steven spent most of the time crying.
We were all present though. It was good quality family time, even with the tears involved.
Task
A 20/40 is just a longer variant of the 15/30 I’ve described before. 20 seconds of sprinting (100% full speed) followed by 40 seconds of walking. Repeat for 10 minutes. I switched to the 20/40 format for two reasons. First, it is a longer sprint which the older kids are ready for, and; second, it is easier to keep track of when to start/stop because it ends on each minute.
This time we had a new whistle we got to use so I didn’t have to yell STOP and START over and over. One whistle blast means run and 2 means stop. Much better for me!
Results
Not a particulartly good outing. We went much later in the evening that normal and almost nobody was excited for it. Having a bad attitude almost always leads to bad effort and bad results.
Josh only did about 1/2 of the laps before he was complaining his knee hurt, and so he walked the rest. Caitlin at almost exactly the same time said she twisted her ankle (on the flat track??), but continued half-heartedly. Kristie tried hard but was ornery about not being able to breath – this is her least favorite running activity. Even Julie had issues.
JR cried as soon as Mom ran away from him. Steven cried as soon as he realized he couldn’t keep up. Andrew finished one lap and begged to be done.
We were going to do 15 minutes of this exercise, but when Nikki came up at 10 minutes and claimed she needed to pee I called it quits, gave 3 blasts to signal we were done, and headed for the car. Julie had just started another lap and so she walked the whole thing to cool down. Who walked with her? The girl who supposedly needed to pee, “sooo bad!”.
I set up the GoPro, so I’ll edit the video if any of it is any good and post it at a later date.
