The job chart

I just got this finished for Natalie. I am excited, and so is she. It has taken me way too long to realize that she is by far old enough to really start helping out. And I need the help. Plus, I am excited to use this to teach her about responsibility and money management. Across the top are the things that she needs to do every day. I laminated everything so she will mark off the boxes with a dry erase marker. (By the way, a laminator is a very fun toy. I got myself one with Christmas money. I had no idea they were so cheap! I think it was only $20.) Her jobs are: homework, practice piano, clean bedroom, more school practice, daily job, brush teeth, read scriptures, and say prayers. The more school practice category is for me to help her work on additional school type stuff. For example, I noticed she needs some practice writing numbers and I want to start doing addition and subtraction flash cards with her. Stuff like that. Then she has a daily job that will change every day, depending on what I need her to do. I put three Velcro circles on the bottom of the chart and Velcro on the back of all of her potential daily jobs. That way I can put up to three jobs on the bottom of the chart for her to do each day and I can rotate them as needed. Most days I will only give her one job. But she might do three jobs on days like Saturday. Also, if she does all of the Daily Jobs for the week, she will get paid $1. The money is not tied in with the other jobs along the top of the chart--those are just expected. The money is only for doing the jobs along the bottom all week. I am excited about the money tie in for a couple of reasons:

1)We can teach her on a personal level about tithing.

2)We can teach her that when you work hard and do a good job, you get paid for it. That is how the real world works. I would like her to learn that before she is actually out in the real world. Same goes for this next one...

3)We can teach her how to manage money. Having worked at a bank right next to a college campus, it was scary to see how many young adults have no idea how money works. And yes, you could add many, many adults into that category too. Just look around at our economy and all of its 0% interest financing on things like TVs and couches... Natalie has started seeing things (like press on nail stickers) at the store that she wants me to get her. Instead, I talked to her about how she can earn money and use it how she wants. She can buy small things when she first gets her money, or she can save it up to buy bigger fun things. After getting her dollar from the tooth fairy the other day, she wanted to go to the dollar store to pick something out. I explained the concept of saving to her and what she could buy later if she waited. She was very excited and told me she wanted to save her dollar. I was a little worried that she would still want to go spend her dollar right away. And I would not have stopped her. But I was very proud when, on her own, she chose to save the dollar and was excited to do it.

So we will see how the job chart works out. I think it will be good for everyone.

Backtracking

Since this serves somewhat as our family journal, I thought of a few things today that I wanted to record. Because if I don't, I know someday I will be trying to remember exactly how old our kids were when these things happened and won't be able to.

This is a long post and probably too boring for most to read. So I will put this little story at the beginning instead of the end. Because its funny. This happened right before I sat down to type this post. Kelton was in the corner and I realized he had been there for a little while. Actually, I realized as I called him over that I couldn't actually remember why he was there. Oops. So, according to the standart protocol as always, I asked him, "Kelton, why did you have to go to the corner? What did you do?" His response, "Because... I pushed your button." I immediately remembered what he had done--he had opened up my laptop and turned it on. He then got in trouble because he knows he is not supposed to play with my computer and he is not supposed to turn it on, and was sent to the corner. After his response, I did the one thing you are not supposed to do when trying to correct bad behavior... I started laughing. So did Kelton. If only I had remembered what he had done, it might not have caught me so offgaurd to hear him say he went to the corner for "pushing my button."


I started teaching Natalie piano lessons on January 26th. I know the exact date because it is written in her lesson notebook. She was so excited to start. I had kind of showed her some stuff on the piano about a year ago and it was obvious that she wasn't old enough to start lessons. Then in January I had someone call me wanting to see if I could teach lessons to her five year old daughter. I agreed. I had taught five year olds before and knew it could be done, although they don't pick up on things quite as fast as a seven year old, and they take a bit more patience to teach. Since I was going to be teaching someone else's five year old, I figured I might as well teach my own five year old. Plus, Natalie was actually closer to being six than five so I decided she was definitely old enough. Natalie is doing really well. She does spend more time messing around playing whatever she feels like on the piano (a lot of which strains my nerves and ears to the breaking point) but she does play her lesson songs too and I hardly ever have to remind her to practice. Now, a few months later, she still asks every few days if it is time for her new piano lesson. Sadly, she doesn't always get her lesson on the same day each week. I tried that. The problem is, her two little brothers attack when they see her at the piano. They leave my other students alone, but not their sister. And if it happens to be dinnertime, or other stuff needs to get done, her lesson gets moved. It's just the way it is. But we have only missed one week so far. I think that's pretty good. Also, part of the reason I was putting off starting lessons with her was I was afraid that I would have a hard time teaching my own child. I have endless patience for teaching other people's children how to play the piano, but didn't know how that would work out with my own. I'm glad to say that I am able to slip into teacher mode, even with my own child, and not get too frustrated when she doesn't understand something.


As a side note, I now have 6 piano students, including Natalie. Two of those students I haven't starting teaching yet, but they will start in about a week. The first one (Natalie T.) I have been teaching for two years, the second one (Hailey) for one and a half years, and then the other one (Hannah) started at the same time as Natalie. It's funny how two years ago when I started teaching piano again after about a two year break (I had 15 students before Kelton was born) I was ONLY going to take the ONE student. But little by little I have decided that I can handle a few more. Plus, it's easier to take on new students when I already know that the students are good kids. And their parents are friends of mine. Since piano teachers can be hard to find, I do feel a certain obligation to pass on the knowledge I have so that there will still be people who can play the piano. So, here I am with six students. But I think I will keep it at that number for a while.


Moving on to Kelton. Several months ago I realized that he knew most of the letters of the alphabet. This surprised me a bit. I knew he knew some of them but didn't realize he knew so many. Over the next few days I actually started teaching them to him and he quickly learned the rest. He even knows the lowercase letters. Then a few months ago I realized that he knows about half of the sounds the letters make. So I started working with him on learning the ones he didn't know. He quickly picked those up too. So pretty much right at three years old, Kelton knows all the letters of the alphabet, upper and lowercase, and all of their sounds. He doesn't quite have all the sounds of the vowels down though. Just the other day it occured to me that I should probably start to try teaching him to read. Very simple stuff, like CVC words. He might not get it at all. Natalie knew all the letters and sounds for well over a year before she understood how to put them together to read words. So we will see what happens.

1 tooth-1 tooth=

Natalie came home from school looking a little different today. Her front tooth has been hanging super loose for about a week now, and today it came out at school. She was so excited. She got a sticker and her teacher gave her a little tooth shaped container to put her tooth in. (The other sticker is an Owl All Star award. She got that for telling the truth even though it meant she would be in trouble. She was talking when they were supposed to be quiet and fessed up.) This brings Natalie's lost tooth count to 3; two on the bottom and one on the top. The other top one is getting pretty loose too.
Here's a better picture of the missing tooth. It won't stay missing for that long. You can see the whole bottom of the new tooth coming in.

And I discovered that this little guy got a new tooth. He probably didn't get it today, but today is when I found it. He hasn't gotten a new tooth since January. This brings his tooth count to 7; Four on the top and three on the bottom.

Square foot garden

I got the garden all done today. This whole square foot garden idea is so easy. I decided to do this method because the dirt we have here can hardly qualify as dirt, let alone "soil" for planting a garden in. We have a few plants in the back yard and it took about a week of continuosly soaking the ground to be able to dig a one foot deep hole. But square foot gardening doesn't use any of the existing dirt.



Here is the frame for the garden. I did ours 2x6 feet. Nate had been working a ton of hours latetly (like between 8-10 billable per day--he's been actually at work for 12+). But he was nice enough to pound these boards together for me last night at like 9:00.



Then we filled it with "square foot gardening mix" which is a combination of peat moss, vermiculite, and compost. I was glad to find out it is sold premixed at Lowe's. And I don't know what the kids are doing. I didn't tell them to put their hands up. I guess they are just excited.

Then you divide it into square foot sections. You are supposed to actually put a grid on, using something like thin boards so you can permanently see your lines. But mine was small enough that I didn't think it was necessary. Plus, I didn't want the cost of the extra wood and the extra work of putting together a grid. I probably would have done it for a larger area though.

Then we put the plants in. Hopefully we can keep it pretty and green like this. From left to right in the picture below is: tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, potatoes, canteloupe, strawberries, and cucumbers. I planted the potatoes and cucumbers from seed, which is why you can't see them. I also only planted one potato plant. In the square behind it I am going to plant 16 carrot plants. But I already planted some carrots elsewhere and I want them to be offset from each other. So I will plant the carrots in the garden over the next few weeks, so I can hopefully have carrots continuosly. And for those of you thinking I am crazy, I plan to grow the cucumbers vertically and have them climb a tomato cage. If that doesn't work, they can grow outside the box. The canteloupe vine will have to go outside the box. I also put my tomato plants way closer together than recommended. But I don't care. They will grow into one giant plant, I'm sure, but in reality, I should have used the entire garden to plant four tomato plants. I wasn't willing to do that. We will see what happens.

My little garden helpers... I even let Kelton skip his nap (*gasp*) so he could help too. You will notice that about half of the garden is in direct sunlight and half is shaded by the wall. This is going to be my experiment. I have one of each plant in the sun and one in the shade. According to the directions, all these plants are supposed to be in direct sunlight. However, I wondered how smart this is when you practically live on the surface of the sun. And the shaded ones might not stay shaded once summer comes and the sun isn't offset in the southern sky. But we will see.

And here are my other carrots that I planted 3 days ago. And no, those are not milk jugs. They are super high tech planters. High quality. Very expensive and hard to find. Okay...they are milk jugs.

I didn't want to make the garden any bigger, but I wanted more stuff. So I planted 5 carrots in each of these. And I have a large storage bin thing I got from the thrift store that I am going to plant 3 more potato plants in. (All of these containers have holes in the bottom for drainage.) I used different dirt for these so we will see how it works. The square foot garden soil is $16 per 2 cubic feet. This other stuff was just $5 for about the same amount. Since I have carrots and potatoes in both kinds of dirt, I will be able to compare.

I went visiting teaching today and one sister showed me her watering system for her garden. That is my next project to look into. It was completely automatic and awesome. I was planning on watering by hand. Okay for the 80 degree here and now. But I don't think I will feel the same way when it is 100+ degrees outside. (Oi! why do I like it here again?)

I am really hoping for at least one edible something to come out of all of this. Otherwise it will just be an expensive failure and we will try again next year (the sq ft soil can be reused after composting). But I figure if it can survive the ants, other bugs, my kids, birds (which I hear love to peck strawberries to death), oh and the blasted sun, we will be in business!

On another note... Happy St. Patrick's Day! Everyone is wearing green today. Well, except me. I don't think I own green. Nate actually has a dark green dress shirt. He wanted to pinch me this morning. But I told him that unless he was planning to pinch all the green-less people at work, he had to leave me alone.

The kids got shamrock shaped pancakes for breakfast.

And yes, they were green too.

Kelton is such a cute boy, but I feel like a lot of times I don't get very cute pictures of him. But I liked this one.

Here's a little St. Patrick's Day story for you. Natalie had a bag of "gold" (spray painted rocks) that she brought home from school. She said we needed to hide them so the leprechauns couldn't steal it. Last night we built a Leprechaun trap and put the gold inside. (Hey Rob, we used glue. Drilling a hole in my foot didn't sound like that much fun.) Natalie was sure she was going to catch a leprechaun, even though we told her they are very tricky. After she was asleep, a leprechaun snuck in and stole the gold and left a few packages of Smarties for payment. Nate told me that she was going to be really upset about loosing the gold. I thought it would be just fine. Well, this morning we all went in to check the trap. Natalie had that "I'm so excited I can hardly contain it" look on her face. She was sure that there was a leprechaun in there. We opened it up and saw the missing gold and Smarties. Natalie burst into tears. She was sad that there was no leprechaun but even more upset that he took her gold. Point for the husband. But that's okay. It probably takes the total to about 425 to 1... Possibly 2. :) (I love you Nate!)

What's funny is that she suddenly stopped the tears and said, "that leprechaun is nice!" Appreciation for the candy had kicked in. I said, "well do you want the gold or the candy?" We had told her she could probably write a note and leave it for the leprechaun and maybe he would give the gold back. Her answer, of course, was "both." Wouldn't it be great if we never had to choose between things we wanted? Hey Cherie, do you want to save up money for a bigger house or pay off student loans? Um... both! I like it. Someone figure out how to work that, and get back to me.

Green thumb...we hope

It's spring break. So I have all three kids home with me. I have been trying to think of things we can do to make the week a little more fun. Within the next few days we are going to plant a garden for the first time ever. (more on that later) I read and was told that Marigolds are a natural bug repelant, so I decided that we could plant some to put in and around our little garden. The kids were really excited to buy the pots. I was really excited to find them at the dollar store. Today during nap time, I let Natalie paint the pots. She loved every minute of it.

Kelton woke up near the end and got to paint a pot too. This picture makes me nervous for their clothes, even though I know we were able to successfully keep the paint off.

Then I let them put in the dirt, or potting soil stuff, or whatever it is. I think it's supposed to be mixed in with existing dirt, but that's not really possible here. So we will see what happens when we try to grow plants straight in this stuff.

Natalie filling up her pot. After this, I showed them how to plant the seeds (which Natalie said were really ugly) and water the dirt.

All finished! It was super hot so Kelton was not really in the mood to sit on the hot patio and have me take a picture. I thought their paintings turned out really good. Now we will wait and see if we get any flowers.

And on to the next project...our square foot garden. I have high hopes...