Day 256 - 9/4 8 months 1 week

This shirt from Aunt Abby fits right, and looks like will be too small before it cools down here in the hot desert.  But I felt like Fall on Sunday never mind the heat, so Zane got to wear it to Church.

 Zane is now 8 months 1 week old, and he is busier than ever.  Little guy is so fast and likes to cruise and walk around furniture and any wall.  He is starting to also show signs of being a climber (not good!) -- he pulls up to furniture or railings and hangs on them and gets his feet up like he's climbing/scaling it.  But his grip isn't strong enough to support his body weight so he has fallen on his back a few times.  He likes to eat veggies, and lately I got our favorite baby food mill out:

and so far Zane has enjoyed fresh strawberries, and spaghetti and chicken noodle soup for dinner.  All that yummy goodness from home!

 Maddie loves to be in Zane's photos.  She loves to carry her baby brother around.  She is a great little sitter too, and keeps a good eye on him when I am not in the room.

I like Zane's profile - droopy cheeks, puppy eyes, and of course, the hair!

Maddie in Music Class

Maddie loves music class at preschool.  She looks forward to it and loves to sing and do hand motions.  It's good too because she gets another teacher besides me at preschool.

Maddie likes to pose for me too.  Here she is after preschool:

 She likes to wear whatever she finds that might fit her from the baby's closet:

 And she loves to show off some interesting gymnastic poses:

 And figuring out how best to smile:

She likes to pick out her own outfit.  The yellow dress is actually a terry cloth Size 8 swim dress that was Allie's.  She loves that thing.  I should take photos of her packed bags next time -- she's got some interesting things in there. She is always carrying around either a purse, a bag, a backpack, or lately, a big garbage sack full of things.

Pet Dog for a Day

Maddie was a dog for a day -- Allie and Collin's pet dog, that is.  It was fun for a long while -- from the time we got home from Church to about bedtime.  They took her for walks on a leash around the house, dressed her in tutus, "groomed" her, taught her tricks, gave her food and drink in a bowl on the floor.

Maddie the dog was in heaven!  And so were Allie and Collin but Maddie took it a little too far and do what makes dog owners mad --

go potty on the bathroom floor!

So the two came running down the stairs and yelled to me what just happened.  My response?  "She's not my dog, she's yours, so you guys go clean it up!".  Pretty soon I hear, "you naughty little dog.  maddie you are not a dog anymore.  I refuse to have you for a pet.  You will clean this up with me" and "okay, okay, I'm sorry, I would never ever do that again!".

See why it's so interesting over here?

Family Economy - take 2!

Seems like job charts get a semi-annual or annual update/redo, and are ever-evolving over here.  As the kids get older, we have more jobs to do around the house!  I look forward to when they are old enough (in our opinion) to do their own laundry, take their turn cooking (Allie is practicing!), and do the yard work, wash my car, etc.
After a long hot summer, these guys were ready to go back to the routine, and excited to earn a little bit of money around the house.  They were begging for a real wooden peg board with their names in vinyl (Allie thinks over the top! --see what I am talking about here) to keep track of their jobs but the possibilities of me actually finding or making one were pretty slim so hence, a revamped, more effective job chart. There are of course things not on here that they do anyway because I need help (baby & Maddie, dishes, dusting, or other extra Saturday jobs) -- we just do not count them to pass off the "stars". Maddie has a job chart too, but she is too young to participate in this system.

*Allie's job chart actually shows cleaning out bathroom drawers as part of her Saturday chores not as an extra job.

How it works:
Once they have completed each column of work (corresponds to time of the day), they earn their "star".  They rotate "common areas" every day but do not rotate between countertop and wood floor duty.  Collin likes vacuuming the wood floors (which Allie doesn't care for :)), and Allie likes to wipe the countertops/table (and Collin doesn't). So that worked out pretty well.

At the end of the night, they count up their stars (easy to do when you have a max of 4 for the day!).  They write it on a piece of paper, I or Kevin initials it, then it gets deposited in our "family bank" which for ease of use is just a jar in our kitchen. Collin made a cute sign for it.

On Saturday, we count up all the stars and then pay them their keep - not in cash, but as a credit in their checkbook registers.  For our family we decided $1 for every star earned (Saturdays earn 2 plus 1 star for every 2 extra jobs they do).  Because they do have the capability of earning quite a bit of money in a month, there are some things we don't buy for them anymore - which includes, for example, extra clothes and shoes, toys, friend presents, and extra yummies).  They pay tithing (10 percent), we encourage them to save at least 20% which we match dollar for dollar, and then the rest is spending money.

A year and a half ago (I cannot believe it has been that long!), I wrote a blog post on our family economy (remember it here).  We've obviously made some changes so that it fits our lives better.  Some points I wanted to make about what worked and what didn't:

1.  I mentioned I didn't like paper job charts -- and I laugh about that now.  I LOVE non-digital job charts -- looking back now, I just didn't have the jobs organized enough and I didn't have an accessible board to hang them on.  Now I do.  I have an "organization wall" in my kitchen (calendar, reminders board and a magnetic board -- so worth ever penny). The key to using non-digital, solid job charts is: accessibility!
2. I LOVE the checkbook registers! I don't usually carry cash around, so payday is a cinch with the checkbook register.  They just have to remember to take it with them when shopping.  I also like that it teaches them checkbook entry skills.  And...thinking ahead - there is an iPhone/iPad app called the "Bank of Mom" which makes it easier for the moms to keep track.
3. I LOVE the idea of matching savings! For example, Allie saved all but $20 of her birthday money to take advantage of the dollar match.  For a kid who likes to spend $ on cutesy stuff ($$ burns a hole in her pocket), it's great!
Now for the things I abandoned:
3.  Myjobchart.com is great -- I love a lot of things about it.  Even though we used that quite a bit, it just got too cumbersome to always assign points to every job - which then caused a lot of mathematical thinking on my part to even out the points between the kids so it would be "fair".  Ha.
4.  I had to set a time for them to "check off" their jobs on the computer.  Easy to do but it was one other thing to do.  Our computer is only available for our kids to use at certain hours of the day - it logs them off when time is up!), and it usually isn't just before bedtime, so that posed a little problem when chores didn't get done early.  I suppose if you had an iPad, this wouldn't be a problem because you don't have to sit at the computer with the kids to check off their stuff.  They can do it right with you while you are trying to get dinner cleaned up or something. :)

In another year or two our job charts will change I am sure, and I will have learned a thing or two about teaching our kids financial lessons!

Resources: valuesparenting.com; entitlementtrap.com (see the wooden pegs which we really wanted to copy there).

Day 245 - 8/24

Day 246 - 8/25

Getting this little guy to smile and be still for me while I take his photo is near impossible! He can go from a serious look to a smiling/laughing face in a few short seconds, and vice-versa, and tries to grab my camera if I am too close, or reaches for my strap so he can taste, no, gum it.

 Excuse the drool.  The food spit-up drool. He drools. A lot.  And he has to change shirts every few hours because he drools a lot.

 He now has two teeth, they are so stinking cute!

Day 248

Saturday mornings are always a treat -- Kevin is home when Bubs wakes up.  For a split second he looked up at me then went back to playing with his dad.

First Day of School 8/22

Collin - 2nd Grade; Allie - 6th Grade

Monday was our first day of school!  It is back to the routine!  The kids were excited to go, especially Collin, since ALA finally got new buildings for K-2nd grade and also one to house the gym/cafeteria and administrative offices.  Allie was excited to wear her Student Council shirt, and not a uniform (of course!).

She serves as a member of the Student Council, which she loves! She got to go to a leadership camp this summer and helped out at the Open House the Saturday before school started.  Allie bid me goodbye at the meeting pad to go to her StuGo (their common term for Student Govt) classroom.  I had to walk Collin over to his class line so I didn't get a chance to snap an "in-front of the school" photo of her like I had planned! Oh well.  My heart jumped a little at the thought of her going to 6th grade that day.  She was only a baby not too long ago.  Now she is almost as tall as me.

Collin bid me goodbye pretty quickly as well, told me "bye mom, love you!" like Allie did and rushed in line with the rest of the kids.  I told him I would be by his classroom to bring him the rest of his stuff sitting in Zane's stroller.  I followed the "herd" of kindergarten parents walking their kids to class. Oh they looked so cute and so small. By the time I got to his classroom, Collin was busy working on a little worksheet.  I got his attention and gave him his "stuff", said goodbye again then I was off.
They had a good first day, they said when I picked them up from school.  And as it was the first day of school, I took them to get gelatos at Dolce Vita right after for their after-school treat.  It was a good treat and they were all excited to tell me all about their day.  Of course, there were more first day of school reports at dinner and FHE that night.  They were so tired and were asleep by 9 p.m.!

The school is right across from the future Gilbert temple! This is the view the kids will have right outside their classrooms or on the playground.  How lucky are they?!  I snapped this photo while waiting in line to pick them up after school.

for kristie

Family Proclamation Lesson #2: The Family is Central to His Plan

So we are going at molasses rate for our family proclamation lessons we started a month or so ago!  We had our 2nd lesson: The Family is Central to his Plan.

Materials: The Family Proclamation, toy dolls/family figures, picture of your family, plan of salvation visuals, temple picture
Opening Song: “Families Can Be Together Forever” CS, 188.

Lesson:
1. Read the first paragraph of the family proclamation. Emphasize the word central and ask "what does 'central' mean?  Central = center, middle, essential, most important.

From left to right: Kevin, me (you love it, right?), Allie, Collin, Maddie, Zane. 

We need some boy dolls at home because all they found was a dollhouse boy, and Metro Man!  But so funny that they found dolls with dark hair like them.  

They were pretty bummed that there was no "hair-y" doll for Zaners.

2. "Scavenger Hunt": Ask the children to go and round up toy dolls/figures to make a family similar to yours.  Our kids really enjoyed looking for the right dolls to represent us.  See photo above.
3. After the children return, show a picture of your family. Emphasize the following points:
 - It was part of Heavenly Father's plan for each of us to come to earth AND belong to a family.
 - Families help us grow and learn how to return to Him someday. We can be like our Heavenly Father.
4. Tell the plan of salvation story using visuals.  I used the visuals from the following site: The Red Headed Hostess.  Emphasize the following points:
 - Life will be hard, and Heavenly Father knew that.  Share the following quote:
Elder Joe J. Christensen, former member of the Presidency of the Seventy, observed, “How many truly great individuals do you know who never had to struggle?” The family is the primary support structure in God’s plan to help us resist evil, overcome weakness, and work out our salvation. For this reason we should do all we can to strengthen the family in these days of confusion and opposition.”
 - Through birth, you gained a body!
 - Living in a family helps us to grow and learn to be like Jesus and Heavenly Father.
 - You have agency to choose good or evil.  It is our responsibility as parents to teach the gospel to the children.  Some wonderful choices you get to make are: baptism (age 8), mission (age 19), temple marriage.  Then you get to be a parent too (hopefully) and start your own family just like Mom and Dad did. Getting married and having a family is all part of Heavenly Father's plan!
 -  Being a parent and raising kids help us learn to be more like our Heavenly Parents.  It is hard and it is a big responsibility but the rewards are great.  Express your love to your family and gratitude for temples (show temple picture) and the sealing ordinance that binds us together forever.
5. Close with song and prayer. Example: Home, CS 192 or #294 Love At Home.

Notes: The kids really enjoyed the activity at the very first part of the lesson. Maddie even got out our wedding album that we flipped through with them at our first lesson thinking we were going to do that lesson again.  Cute!