Chores

The kids graduated up in chores a few weeks ago. They all are responsible for "Hour of Power" on Sundays- an hour where they have to clean their room, clean the bathroom, and vacuum the upstairs and get their work approved by Brian (the harder to judge of the two of us). They have to do basic pick up in their rooms each morning (no dirty laundry on floor, blinds opened, lights off, toilet flushed). I'm in charge of checking this each day. They also have to put their laundry away weekly. For a long time Jake was on dog poop and recycling, Tanner fed the dog, and Faith wiped up his muddy footprints and fed the fish. Starting a few weeks ago Tanner graduated to dog poop because Jake graduated to lawn mowing. That means that Faith gets to feed the dog.

Tanner takes his new duty very seriously and spends a good amount of time searching for, picking up, and disposing of the poop. It's pretty cool to see him do his best at a job that could be considered by many to be pretty gross. Jake insists he likes mowing the lawn better than poop duty even though it takes him approximately 4x as long as picking up the poop ever did and the fact that the lawnmower is approximately twice his size. Faith feels important being in charge of feeding Jackson- and was very upset the two times she forgot to do so and found out the next day that Jackson was hungrily whining at the back door the evening before. She tends to complain more about wiping up the footprints and we jokingly call her "Cinderella" as she throws herself on the floor to spray the prints and wipe them up

Brian and I had two main goals this spring: get the yard done and the windows cleaned. Well, the yard is about 3/4 of the way finished but I don't see how we will get it done before summer arrives as we leave for Utah on Friday and then I leave for Chicago for 8 days the day after we get back from Utah, returning after the official beginning of summer. Oh well. As for the windows... we snuck those in today. OK, so we only got the back side of the house done. But they look so much better that I am now inspired to get the front windows done before we leave! It was actually pretty fun to do together and we followed it up with a trip to the pool so I can't complain too much.

I hope the kids are learning how to be part of a family and how to take care of basic home maintenance. Plus, I hope that they are learning that by working together things get done faster, leaving more time for the fun stuff. Maybe they even saw Brian spray me with the hose and us laughing together outside today and noticed that chores done have to be boring- like most of life, it's all in the attitude.