Fun Times

We had a good week this week.  I want to do a quick brag about Celeste.  They had an awards assembly for the Middle School this week.  The English teacher got up and gave this glowing speech about how the student getting this particular exceptional English student award this month, really needed to be in a College course because she was so awesome.  And that student was our very own Celeste!  We're proud.

We also do this system in our home for teaching our kids to be awesome and well disciplined individuals.  I wont go into detail here because it would take forever.  But it's a level system of consequences and rewards for negative and positive behaviors.  Each kid is always on a certain level and each level has a different set of privileges with level 1 being basically NO privileges whatsoever, because they have behaved badly, and level 6 is the top level.  To be in level 6 you have to be pretty darn great;  doing things like not just doing your homework and chores and refraining from arguing or fighting with anyone, but going the extra mile to be super helpful, sweet and great.  If a kid is in level 6 for 7 straight days, which is really hard to do, they earn themselves some special treatments, like a date with mom or dad.  We had Celeste and Eden both make it a week in level 6, so they went out on a girls date with me.  It was a blast!  It was a blast mainly because we happened to run into Eden's celebrity crush at Barnes and Noble.  And I am not kidding about celebrity crush.  Eden really is obsessed with this guy.  So she was over the top elated when she got this picture with him!  It made my day to see her joy, I tell ya.

You might be saying "Who is that 'celebrity'?"  He is Matt Meese from Studio C.  It is a BYU sketch comedy show that Eden has faithfully and ecstatically watched every single episode of;  while she drooled over Matt Meese.  Pretty cute.

Another fun thing about our week was our Family Fun Day activity.  We do Family Fun Day each Saturday.  But for some reason, this week's was especially enjoyable for me.  I guess because I got the idea from a Family Home Evening we had when I was a kid.  My parents took all us kids to the mall.  (8 of us children.)  They gave us each, I think, maybe $5 and told us to go shopping.  They made it a contest.  They said the kid who got the most with their $5 would win.  It seems silly, but I remember this family home evening better than any other I think we may have had.  It was just a lot of fun for me. So we kind of copied that idea for our FFD this week. We took all our kids to Target.  We told them they each had just $2 to spend.  Not much, but we're cheap.  We gave them a time limit and had them meet up with us at check-stand #1 in about 25 minutes.  We told them that the kid who spent their money on what we as judges (Steve and I,) felt was the best use of their money would win themselves another $2.  Steve and I hung around the little kids while they shopped and the older kids went off on their own.  It was such a joy for me to see our children having fun with this little activity.  When it was all said and done, Hana won when she bought a notebook to write in, with just $1.50 and gave the rest of her money to Becca in order for her to buy something for more than $2 that she chose.  The notebook was useful and the act of giving some of her money away we thought was generous.  Jonah blew his money on candy and admitted he knew we wouldn't pick him as the winner with a purchase like that.  And he was correct.  Eden bought a little vase and mailbox, Andy a candy bar, Charity stickers and a bracelet, Sam a bag of chocolate covered pretzels, Becca a ball and goo, and Celeste deodorant and a headband.

Wish I had gotten photos of this.