I took some time over our holiday weekend to brainstorm and come up with some plans for our summer days (pre-baby summer days at least). To help the kids out, I even wrote out a schedule for our first planned day today with morning jobs, movie time, biking at the church, and school time.
But...
For the last few months we've had a great little system set up where if the kids are being mean to each other or rude to mom or dad, they have to grab a little job from our job bowl to do. (3-4 minute jobs, things like 'vacuum the kitchen rug' or 'clean up the cars in the basement'). Lately, it has not been working quite so well with some of our children because they get so upset about getting a job that things quickly spiral downhill and the jobs add up and up...
So our morning jobs stretched through all the other items on our schedule this morning with a new record of 27 jobs in a row (this takes some creativity to think of that many 3 minute jobs!)
Fortunately, that meant our morning was freed up and we could easily help out to watch cousin Ethan :)
And before lunchtime the jobs were done, the house was cleaner, and all the kids were happily playing again. Phewph.
Maybe we'll try our schedule again tomorrow. I really am excited still and hopeful for some better summer mornings!
