Are you serious??

Once again the weather forcastors blew the forcast. No pun intended of course. They predicted 1/2" of snow and we ended up with a blizzard warning and 5 inches. Today is our 7th day of no school due to weather since the beginning of December. July here we come;)

Rewards pay off

A few weeks ago I posted about our new chores and rewards system. I figured it was time for an update on how things are working out. I am happy to report that it is going really well. The kids are doing the chores that are posted for them and sometimes even arguing that someone got that chore "the last time." Logan loves to clean the toilet for some reason and gets very upset if someone else gets the job. It's also been good for us to see who does a better job at which chore. Peighton does the best at cleaning the bathroom sink and mirror while Grant does the best job of dusting and vacuuming. The kids are also seeing the benefit of saving their reward points. Last week Logan saved his and was able to get this fake kids shaving kit for the bathtub. He was so excited and of course wanted to take a bath immediately so he could "shave."

A coworker told me about a website she uses for her kids for chores. It's called www.payjr.com It also allows the parents to input a dollar amount for specific chores. This is definately something I could see myself using this system with Grant. I think P & L will benefit more from the system we are using now due to their age.

Weekend Away

For Christmas my parents paid for a weekend away for all of our families. We only traveled about 35 miles away to a hotel. The hotel was wonderful. It had an indoor waterpark, arcade & Nascar simulator. We checked into the hotel early on Saturday and the kids enjoyed swimming for several hours. All three of them went down the waterslides, shot water cannons in the pirate ship and soaked up the warmth in the hot tub.

We ordered pizza from Casey's, swam for a few more hours and then hit up the arcade. The kids burned through about $20 in quarters in 20 minutes. Yesterday morning we decided to try out the Nascar simulators. Dad drove one while Logan was his passenger, John and Peighton were together, Grant & I were together and then Jon drove one himself. Grant drove our car and I got pretty motion sick. He kept flipping the car upside down and bumping into walls so I'm sure that didn't help any;)

After we checked out of the hotel we went to Perkins for brunch and headed home. It was really nice to leave home and spend some time with the family.

Another Snowy Day

We got another 6 inches of snow last night. Unbelievable. I think that puts us at 36 inches for the winter, or something like that anyways. Way too much if you ask me. I'm ready for the sun to shine and warm us back up into the 70's. It's also really windy with 40+ mile an hour gusts. John went out to use the snowblower on the driveway and just as he was finishing up the belt broke. This is the 2nd time the snowblower has broke in the last month. Apprently it's not happy with all this snow either;) The high temperature is suppose to be -4 tomorrow. BRRR!!!

As much as I'm tired of winter already I have to admit that it did feel good to not have school today. This makes our 4th snowday this school year. At this rate we might as well plan a 4th of July picnic for the kids because that's how long we'll be in school. Well, maybe not that late into summer but it sure will feel like it.

Chores & Rewards

I've been really wanting to make the kids more responsible for doing chores. However, I'm cheap and I didn't want to have to pay them an allowance for doing things that they should be expected to do anyways. Thanks to some online friends and http://www.theidearoom.blogspot.com/ I was able to find something that would work for our family.

These are some of the chores the kids will be doing. They won't be doing each of these every day however. I have some of them divided up into envelopes with days of the week on them and then have them sorted according to which day I want those things to be done.

I made magnets for each of the kids using their first initial. The magnets are moved around daily so that each kid has a different set of chores every day. They know which chores are theirs based on whos magnet is on which chore.

I also made direction cards for the chores that required cleaning products or a little more direction. Fortunately all of my kids can read so I didn't have to draw pictures;)

Each cleaning product is "star coded" so that the kids know which product goes with which chore.

Reward points are given each day. The kids each have a jar with their name on it that their points (beads) go into. I just didn't take a picture of that exciting step;) At the end of the week (Sundays) the kids can spend their points in the reward store. Each item in the store is worth a different amount of points. They can choose to save their points from week to week to get something worth more, spend part of their points or spend all of their points.

We're on day 3 (we started on January 1st) and so far things are working well. The kids have been excited to do their chores and earn points towards something fun. Their first redemption night is tonight. I know they won't have many points but I'm anxious to see who saves and who spends.

I'm playing around with my blog header, background and colors. Bear with me while I try to find something that I like.

I'm a loser

I don't know how I ever thought I would be able to keep up with a blog as I can't even keep up with my 3 kids. I promise from now on that I will try harder;)

Candles

I spent all day Saturday making the candles for Crystal's wedding. It was quite the job as there were 48 flute glasses to fill. Each glass took 4 ounces of wax. Crystal & Sean etched the glasses themselves with beautiful little stars. They did a great job and I think they will look gorgeous when they are lit at the reception.

Cement Swirl Art

Last week the kids got one of those new Crayola swirl art chalk thingies. They each got a turn on the driveway to create their art. It was fun to see what cool combinations they could come up with. Two days later it rained and washed the swirls away.

We're Camping

The weekend of July 4th the kids wanted to go camping so bad. It was WAY to hot for momma;) though. I got our little pup tent out of the basement and set it up in Peighton's room. The kids loved it!! We filled it with sleeping bags and lots of blankets to make it as soft as we could. They slept in it 3 nights in a row before I got tired of looking at it. Who knew you could have so much fun camping in the air conditioning?!

Slacker

I'm a slacker. I have a horrible time keeping up with this thing. My bad:(

Ok, I'm a procrastinator

I told myself I was going to start a blog in November. I did and well, I failed miserably at keeping up with it. My life just like everyone elses has been hectic. With 3 kids, 2 dogs, 1 foster dog and a husband I barely have time to go to the bathroom by myself. I promise to check in more often;)

One of those?

Ever since blogs came out I always thought that I would never have "one of those." And yet, here I sit with my very own blog. I have always loved to write and never have the time so I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised that my inner self was yearning for a blog all to itself. LOL!