Poor Phebe

Today Phebe's older siblings all went to school. For the next month it is just the two of us for a few hours each day. At the end of that month we will have a baby to keep us busier.

She plotted how she was going to sneak onto the bus.

It is raining and is very dismal.

She has requested going to a friends house.

She has demanded going to Grandma's house

She has asked to watch a movie.

She wants music on Youtube.

She wants an apple.

The kids have only been gone for an hour.

I think she is having separation issues.

Still isn't in the book

The children's organization at my church is called primary. Each week they get together and learn songs about Jesus and have lessons about His gospel. When I was in primary we had a weekly ritual that to this day made me laugh.

Each week our song leader would ask what song we would like to sing. My little class of girls asked for this song. It is called a Child's Prayer. I love this song very much.

On the other hand, one of the little boys without fail would ask for Welcome to the Jungle by Guns and Roses.

OK, that isn't the official video and it doesn't even have lyrics, but I think it is a neat performance. Plus you can see how a bow can take a beating.

That was our weekly ritual. Now every time a child requests A Child's Prayer in the back of my mind I hear Sister Hartung saying " Sorry Eric, Welcome to the Jungle is still not in the hymn book."

The gift that keeps giving.

I am really good at thinking I am prepared for Christmas and then finding out nearly too late that I have forgotten a bunch of things. So in an effort to avoid that I have already purchased a fair amount of gifts and spent part of today working on a list of things that would make nice gifts for our loved ones.

 I have two 20 something  year old bachelor brothers, Roger and Alan. I asked Phebe what she thought I should get for Roger.
Phebe: A wallet, just like mine.
Me: and what should we get for Alan?
Phebe: I think we should give him my wallet too.
Me: I see. What kind of things do you like to see in your stocking?
Phebe: My wallet. I really like my wallet.

I can tell Phebe. I can tell.

Free Lemonade!

For a year or so, my daughter Naomi has been on a crusade to run a lemonade stand. She was convinced that she was going to make tons of money. I on the other hand was convinced it was just going to be one more thing I would have to supervise without the pay off she was expecting. I was not thrilled with the prospect. 

Some years my husband and I will go out to Indianapolis for a giant game convention called GenCon. This year we decided that Victor was old enough to come along and actually enjoy himself. Victor was quite excited. Part of the deal though was that he had to raise $35 to help pay for his 4 day badge. Suddenly letting them run a lemonade stand didn't sound quite so bad. 

After a lot of mulling it over we  decided that we would offer our product for free. We put out a tip jar for those who have a burning desire to give kids money but we literally gave away many cups of lemonade completely free. 

The whole thing turned into a social experiment of sorts. It was really interesting to see how different people reacted. There was no catch, just a free cup of lemonade. 

 In the beginning I had my children commit to one full week before we would call it quits. Monday - Friday 11:30 am-1:00 pm they would stand out there pestering everyone who walked, biked, skated, or drove by. At the end of the week we would discuss whether they wanted to keep it up. 

In the end we ran the stand for approximately 6 weeks total. 

I think the lemonade stand has been a fantastic experience for learning so many life lessons. 

My family and I sat down and discussed what they learned from out summer lemonading. Here are some of what my kids said and what I have observed. 

• They learned confidence and skills for approaching strangers. ( Yes, I am well aware of "stranger danger" but I don't completely buy into the way our society handles it. Let's face facts, your whole life you will have to interact with people you don't know initially, thus they are automatically strangers. I firmly believe that teaching them appropriate methods for dealing with strangers is more valuable than terrifying them of the world.)
• Perseverance-There were stretches of time or even days when few people stopped and things were simply not as much fun, but you just keep going.
• Customer service skills. ( I would not say we have portion control down yet though.)
• Saving and investing money. Each child had a goal set for their portion of the earnings. They also decided on a specific amount they took out for reinvesting in supplies. I gave them the money initially to get started. However, once they had earned that much money I was repaid. 
• Record keeping. They were given a ledger to keep track of the earnings. The younger children needed more help tracking. Victor became very good at adding up his money and calculating how much tithing needed to come out. 
• Shopping around for better prices. They quickly realized they got far more for their money at Aldi than they did anywhere else. 
• Putting on happy face. It didn't matter how the customer reacted, you smile and tell them to have a nice day.
• Be a part of what is going on. They had to be actively engaged. Passively sitting in a chair waving a sign around does not encourage anyone to stop. 
• Team work. Each child seemed to find a little nitch in the system. 
• Focus. (Let's just say that Phebe and Caleb served more as a focus challenge than actual help.)
• Everyone gets a chance. Every person that came near was given the opportunity to accept. There was no way to tell who would stop and who wouldn't. As Caleb, age 5, said "You have to ask everybody because you can't see the ideas in their heads." 
• Charity (OK, that is probably mostly just me. We have a few children in the neighborhood who seem to lack in much parental supervision so they came to visit us 2-3 times daily in our hour and a half. The selfish part of me just wanted to hand them a cup and send them on their way, but they obviously were craving attention so I had to work seeing them as God sees them.It was a good challenge for me to have.)
• They also became far better at accepting responsibility for setting up and cleaning up the stand. 

It was interesting to see how different people reacted to our little set up. Some grin, others wave, a few seem embarrassed and won't make eye contact with you. This has been a really impressive opportunity to become better acquainted with our neighbors. 

We live right near a hospital and down the street from an ambulance station. As such we ran into interesting people like the man with a broken hand who stopped to chat for a while. Or the woman who was on the way to the hospital because her young child had stuffed a bead up her nose. We understood that the bus and emergency vehicles weren't really going to stop, but they were called to anyway. The kids were stunned when an assist coach (some kind emergency vehicle) stopped and gave them several dollars saying  " This is for all your hard work guys." That was after 3 weeks of yelling at them to stop. We had a police officer, nurses on break, men who tried to get their dogs to drink a cup. It literally is impossible to tell who will accept their offer. 

(If you were to decided to run a stand I highly recommend buying frozen cans of lemonade from Aldi. I had a surprising amount of people ask what our recipe was because it was so good.) 

I am so glad that we chose to run a lemonade stand, OK maybe I am glad I gave into my daughter's hounding. It has been a really positive experience. They are already plotting what they are going to do next year. They are also looking for suggestions for during the school year. (They want to do hot chocolate but that sounds like a logistical nightmare to me, especially with a new baby that will be here.)

I hope you had a fabulous summer. 

Over there, no, maybe over here.

I am probably doing things wrong. I try not to spend all day on it. Some days I feel like it is all I do.

I feel like I spend my day just moving things around.

I move the laundry from the basket to the washer, etc, then back to get put away.

I move the dishes around from the cupboard, to the table, washed and back away.

Toys get pulled out and put back.

Day after day. Yes, I try to mix more memory making things in with the routine. But even going on a picnic means moving things to the basket and having to put it all back in the end. So much is just move something from here to there and back again. Yes, I have the ever helpful Phebe so the messes aren't always the same.

I just wonder if I am the only one who ever feels this way. I guess that is why it is so important to work on more intellectual stimulation. It would be so very easy to get bogged down in the mundane.

I hereby declare

I hereby declare that from now on the first Thursday of every month will be Damion's birthday party at 5:30.

This declaration is decreed since Victor used a permanent marker on my dry erase calendar.

Watch out!

This cake just makes me laugh.

As you can see I pulled it from The Cake Wrecks website.

I really am not sure why one would need a horse with chainsaw arms, but I guess there might just be a time for it after all.