living the freeman life

Happy New Year! I love New Year's Day...probably for the same reason I love the first day of school. It's a fresh start. I love making resolutions (and honeslty, don't really get that "down on myself" if I don't keep them). This year I picked out four...and blogging weekly (at least) is one of them. I know, I know...I vowed to do this awhile ago and then got out of the habit. BUT, I'm hoping to actually keep it up.

Today, we continued our tradition of playing board games at the Rogers' house with Nana & Grandad. We ate lots of yummy food and played a variety of games. Adam started us off with a rousing game of BINGO. Here he is calling out the numbers!

 Thought this was a great picture of Nana and Grandad. We taught them to play "Farkle"- a fun risk-taking dice game that we got for Christmas, thanks to Eric's mom. We all have loved it!

Caleb goes back to school tomorrow...which is sad. I've enjoyed having him home. He is such a big helper and loves to play with Adam. Adam goes back on Tuesday. Both boys are sleeping in until at least 7:15am (HUGE improvement from 5:30am like it used to be!). They play very well together 90% of the time. Their favorite thing to do is play "spies" with each other. This usually involves packing their spy bags with notebooks, pens, binoculars, etc. and making up stories. I love listening to them as they chatter downstairs about the various villains they are trying to find and how they are going to apprehend them.

We also just started (as of today) chores and allowances.  We have a wipe off chart for right now (soon to be improved to a magnetic chart just for ease of use) for each of the kids. They have a couple of morning chores (feed cats, put dirty clothes in hamper, etc.), a couple of afternoon chores (homework, straighten room), and a few evening chores (wipe off kitchen table, sweep under kitchen table, etc.). They each have a couple of weekly chores including wiping down sinks, collecting trash, etc. I also included a list of "extras" that they can do for 50 cents a piece if they want extra money. We implemented the system this morning and surprisingly they loved it. They liked having a visual reminder of what they were expected to do (instead of me nagging reminding them). They also loved being able to earn extra money. Caleb opted to vacuum his room (!!) and wash the windows, and Adam chose to wash baseboards. It was amazing to have them as helpers instead of adding it to my "to do" list. No, they do not do it perfectly, but it's nice to see them willing to help out. We did communicate to them that chores and allowances are not related. You do not lose your allowance if you do not do your chores. (However, they can lose privileges). Allowance is used to teach budgeting (i.e. tithing, saving). We'll see how that goes. :)