Child Labor

We had a great Mother's Day complete with dinner cooked by Will and awesome entertainment by the kids.

Deaven's gift was a "Coupon Book" and I swear that boy is the only one that could make that gift completely original. He is pure comic genius sometimes. The front of the coupon book started with a banner saying, "Vote for Deaven for best child". Okay, random but funny.

Here are just a few of his coupons:

• Are your teeth too pretty? Come get a piece of free candy

......and my absolute favorite:

• Feeling tired? Well let's switch bed times!

That kid keeps us laughing constantly!! And what's best is he is rarely TRYING to be funny. He just is.

The weather has finally turned the corner and we are getting days that are nice and dry and warm-ish, which has been wonderful.
Peyton working on her Cowgirl skills.
Like every family, we seem to cycle through different schedules, programs and systems that work in keeping everyone on track and Mom's nagging to a minimum. We were in desprete need for a Chore System re-vamp (which also included keeping the house picked up a little better...does anybody else's children seem to explode sometimes??).

Will and I talked a decided what we are really trying to do with our kids with having them do chores is to help them become responsible, hard working and reliable when they leave our home. Really, this is their first "Job". So we set it up a little more like one, complete with time cards and pay days. They switch between chore lists each week to mix it up a bit and we track other things on their cards, such as house pick up before bed, etc. It's seems to have given some life back into our system.
I haven't been putting our Family Home Evenings on here lately, but here's what we did last night.

FAMILY HOME EVENING: GRATITUDE
We read a few quote and scriptures that talked about how important it is for us to be grateful to God for all the blessings we enjoy. We made a list of all the blessings our family enjoys and then cut them up and threw them in a bag. We pulled them out one by one and played Charades with them.

We then used some paints and decorated this brick to remind us to be grateful more. It was a nice night and the kids can never get enough charades!!

This month Will is turning 40. The kids and I have planned fun things to celebrate him every single day and he's surprised every time. It's been a ton of fun and the kids are loving it. He's an amazing Dad and husband and worthy of a month long celebration!! Sometimes it's something small like the kids just singing him a song or bigger like something he really enjoys. 10 days down, 21 to go!! His actual birthday is May 30th!!