"It's your money!"

I am not sure if it is the age or if a little responsibility has just gone a long way, but Samantha has earned her allowance three weeks in a row. This may be a record. I was afraid the story that she stayed up until midnight completing her jobs a few weeks ago would get out and that Child Protective Services would be knocking on my door, however, I am glad I held my ground that day and it seems to have paid off.

Background info:

There is a famous story/embarrassing moment in our family about Samantha. When she was little every time we went to the grocery store and she wanted something a little extra like a candy bar near the check-out. My response was always, “We don’t have any money for that!” However just before a trip to visit family I told her to pick something that she wanted as a special treat for the airplane ride. After years of telling her “No” she was floored. In her sweet excited and loud voice she exclaimed, “WE HAVE MONEY?” Everyone turned and giggled and I have never forgotten that moment.

Not long after that Scott brought home a video Called “Your Money, Your Children, Your Life.” By Neale Godfrey. We have only watched that video once, but we incorporated the theories and that is how we came up with the system we use to help our children manage and learn about money. In short, our kids get a dollar per year of age, if they earn it. They have chores that are just expected because they are part of the family like cleaning their rooms, making their beds, clearing their dishes and toy clean-up. But if they choose to do their extra jobs, and they complete all of them, they can get paid. Then their money goes into 4 different categories: 10% tithing; 30% Quick Cash (wallet); 30% Medium-Term Savings (savings jar); and 30% Long- Term Savings (bank).



Now when Samantha was 5 and Jacob was 3 years old, $8 didn’t seem like that much. Four years later however, paying a 9, 7 and two 5 years olds every week I sometimes question the system. $26 a week or $104 a month is getting a little pricey. Granted I have never paid out that much. I don’t have perfect children and I have never paid everyone, every week. If that became the trend we really would have to find a different system.

Over time the system has been “Ethingtonized” and I have tied jobs to other privileges such as TV, Xbox, and friend time. I often take away toys/clothes that don’t get picked up and then charge the kids .05 per item to get their things back. Sometimes they spend it too fast, and then their toys stay up high till the next week. Their Quick Cash is their money to use for what ever they want. I try hard not to interfere, but the frugal side of me sometimes puts my foot down. Like last week when Jacob tried buying a package of Oreo’s at the pharmacy for $4.59. That one just didn’t fly. He did find a smaller package for $1.19 that made it through check out, but I laughed when we got home to find that there were only 4 Oreo’s and he didn’t even have the money to pay me back. Due to the circumstance, Samantha and the twins each paid .30 for a chocolate covered Oreo and it seems Alex found his way up on the counter and ate the last one. Sometimes things just don’t work out.

Jacob actually has the most money in the bank. The privileges tied to jobs seem to be the right motivation for him and often he quickly does his homework and jobs to earn such privileges, the money is just an extra benefit. (With the clarification since his birthday he has had plenty of toys to keep him occupied so he hasn’t been paid the last 2 weeks). He takes on the responsibility and thinks it is easy; a few months ago he was given the same work load as Samantha. Since Samantha has a hard time completing her three jobs everyday I was worried, but Jacob is motivated and has kept the pace. I am not kidding when he actually asked for 4 jobs a day, but we will wait for that one.

Samantha has a hard time with our system. From her perspective, she always had more to do (she is two years older) than anyone which obviously isn’t fair. She doesn’t play Xbox, she doesn’t care about TV, and it is hard to play with friends during the week so why do jobs. She likes money, but she has expressed frustration when her money gets divided up and she doesn’t feel like it is worth the effort for a small amount of spending cash. When she doesn’t do her 3 jobs per day they stack up and by Saturday it is just too overwhelming. Sometimes she will get close to finishing, but because her room isn’t clean she doesn’t qualify for the allowance. She has given me a lot of free work over the years.

She knows that the boys often get more treats to than her, but they normally share or she finds other ways to pay. Last week with the Oreo incident I found out that she had “borrowed” a quarter (Matthew now has a nice IOU note in his wallet-probably not a habit to encourage but the Oreo had already been eaten). The tooth fairy has also been a nice supplemental income for the last year, until her teeth stopped falling out.

In the past I have looked for the right button to push and help encourage Samantha to do her work. She doesn’t care about TV, or Xbox, and friends and outside playtime only motivate her some of the time. One thing she does care about is books. She reads all the time and can’t wait till I go the library every other week to check her out more. If she goes with me to the library she always has her bag overflowing with books. I have toyed with the idea of making reading time a privilege but that always seemed a little backwards. Thankfully the school library had no problem helping us in that area.

A few weeks ago at school Samantha didn’t screw her water bottle tight enough and it leaked all over her backpack, including a school library book. The book was completely soaked. When she returned it to the library they assessed the damage and tried to fix it but they decided that she would need to replace the book. All library privileges were revoked until the $10.71 fine was paid. Samantha was devastated and wanted to bring the money in right away. This is where our little money management system comes in. Obviously it is not fair to make me pay for a book I never even saw, so I told her it was her responsibility.

Now we come full circle to the day before Jacob’s birthday when Samantha said “she had too big of a problem and too much to pay for,” an exact quote with a lot of drama. I refused to pay for her book and she needed to pay for her present to Jacob. She knows that she gets a big allowance, but that day she said that she would rather have only .50 a week and then she wouldn’t have to pay for anything extra. The other kids were on their way to bed. I stood my ground on not helping her out financially and allowed her to stay up as long as it took to finish her chores.

She was slow and took a lot of breaks but she was proud when I paid her. She had enough to cover her present and this Monday she will be able to pay off her library fine. Now she wants to start saving for an American Girl doll, we figured it is going to take a few months. I see a lot of bumps in our future and I am not sure how our system will continue to work. When she gets older I expect her to pay for fun outing with friends and extra clothes. Will she be a smart money manager and financially self-sufficient? Maybe we should pull out that video and out and see if we are on track, a month ago I don’t think so, but maybe we have moved in the right direction.

A new Game!

Samanatha announced that she had a new girl in her class the other day. Her name is “Lizzy” then she went on to say that she actually was in her kindergarten class and had moved away, but back then her name was "Erin". We are not sure why she has changed her name but we came to the conclusion that maybe she had switched to a middle name. This lead to a funny conversation where for the rest of the afternoon we tried to call everyone in our family by their middle names. It was weird and nothing fit; I guess we don’t have good middle names. Which isn’t surprising because Scott and I really have a hard enough time finding names we like, so that would be a feat if we could come up with two great names for our kids.

For a little bit of history; my mom hated her middle name, never used it and dropped it altogether when she got married. She decided to not curse her girls with the same fate and none of my sisters have middle names. I have a really long first name, but no middle name, which does sometimes cause confusion. Kimberly is a nickname; my real name is KimberlyAnn (no space. Kimberleanne was the original spelling on my birth certificate but was legally changed when I was five.

When Scott and I were dating he gave me 4 different middle names and proceeded to give middle names to all my sisters too. I have many love letters addressed to Gertrude, and one of my sisters will still answer to Bertha. My only brother has followed my mom’s tradition and has not given middle name to his girls. Obviously with the naming spree that Scott went on when we were dating, when our first girl was born she did get a middle name.

Samantha Dawn. I love the sound of her name when you put the two together. Dawn was one of Scott’s sister’s middle name and we said that Samantha was the dawn or the beginning of our family. She likes her middle name too, but when I tried just calling her the other day for our game she got really mad. Together we decided it was kind of short and ugly by itself, but really goes well with her first name.

As our first born son, Jacobwas given Scott as his middle name. Once again the two sound nice together, and it really rolls of my tongue when he is in trouble. There are a lot of Jacob’s in his school and I told him if he ever wanted a different name he could go for Scott. But we decided that having two Scott’s in the house was more confusing that have 2-3 Jacob’s in his class. Besides, he really doesn't look like a "Scott," he would have to start growing red hair.

Then there are the twins. These poor boy’s didn’t even have names when they came into the world and it wasn’t because they weren’t born early (they stated in so long the doctor finally induced). The first day they were Twin A and Twin B, no joke. That night we took a list of a hundred names and played a matching game. We came up with Joshua Kent and Matthew Kyle . Kent was Scott’s father’s middle name; and I regretted that we didn’t use my Dad’s middle name for Matthew. (It has been five years but if you go back to their birth announcement page there is still a warning stating, “Names subject to change without notice.) So watch out! I wasn’t happy with our choice but since we were not doing the cute twin naming thing with the first names I thought we should do it with the middle names. Kyle is a random name that got picked just because it started with a "K".


As a complete side note I will tell you that when they were tiny everyone wanted to know what their names were. Many strangers were disappointed to hear "Joshua and Matthew". What kind of twin names are those? So I went through a phase where I would respond “Kent and Kyle” It seemed to be a better crowd pleaser, but I really always did cringe when I said it.

Once again when we played our middle name game the other day didn’t seem to fit. Maybe I just have a hard time with change but we got some laughs. I don’t think they will ever go by their middle names. Especially now that no one cares what their names are, we will never get much use of those names. Not even when they are in trouble. Since they are together when they get into trouble “Joshua and Matthew” is already a mouth full. I was five when my mom had my name legally changed. Maybe it is time to visit the records office and give Matthew a nice family name; Matthew Ernest doesn’t sound as bad as I thought. I does take away from the one syllable pattern that we created in all our middle names, but at least it will have meaning. This is a well used name in my Dad’s family and my mom broke the tradition when she didn’t name my brother Ernest—not even as middle. Five years ago when we were deciding I figured if they didn’t use it for my brother then my dad couldn’t fell bad when I didn’t use it for one of my boys; but I do feel bad.

Lastly we have Alexander James; another beautiful name that I love and use often even when he is not in trouble. James is a strong family name on my mom’s side, but I liked it even before I knew that. I even have proof these names go well together because there is a boy in our ward close to Alexander’s age who has the same first and middle name.

Alex is a cute nick name but the kids have shorted it to “Alli” which we all know is a girls name--however, even Alex can say that. So we have played with his name over the last few weeks. Other nick names that I have tried calling him are Andy, Lex, or A.J. -which I really like, but none of those are any easier. We just don’t want Alli to stick. So on with the game... the other day we tried James or Jimmy for this little guy and decided it was another middle name dud. We had a fun afternoon, but we probably should have been doing something more important like homework.

My new recipe

A few weeks ago I made these great new muffins. Normally corn muffins are really dry, crumbly and they always make a mess. But this one night I noticed that I had made moist muffins and the kids didn’t make that much of a mess either. I also noticed that the batch hadn’t made as many as it normally does, but the kids didn’t eat them up like they normally do either, so it evened out. As I was cleaning up the kitchen I realized that I had attempted to double the recipe but I had only doubled the eggs and milk, the rest was normal. I would love to elude you into thinking that I had made these from scratch, but alas they were just the boxed variety, and my clue was the other unopened box sitting on the counter.

Unfortunately this is a common occurrence at our house. After years of marriage Scott has learned that if he wants a good Sunday dinner or if we have company he is going to have to do things himself. I am not ashamed to admit that he is a better cook than me. Especially after years of trying I just know it is a gift that I just don’t have. In addition to being forgetful or distracted I swear there is just a “kitchen common sense” area in my brain that never developed.

For all my guests a month ago at book club I truly apologized. I sabotaged the best rice crispy recipe, twice. I made the yummy treats a few hours before, but when I went to cut them moments before the everyone was about to arrive, they were as hard as rock. I had enough ingredients, so then as people were coming I was in the kitchen trying to make them again. Immediately I could tell they were going to harden too. Instead of waiting until the end of book club, I served them gooey and hot. The leftovers were bricks an hour later. I followed the recipe exactly; I guess this is one that I will have to leave to Scott.

Maybe I am giving too much information, but here is a lovely sample from last week. Do you really want to know the history of this beef? First I defrosted this roast and another roast at the same time and thought I could put them both in the crock pot. Cook once with lots of leftovers. Of course it didn’t fit, so I put the extra roast in the fridge for anther day, a few days went by and every morning I forgot to start the second roast. Finally at 2 pm a one day, I decided I couldn’t leave it in the fridge another day and put it in knowing it wouldn’t be done by dinner time. Scott joked that I would have to get up at 2 am to get it, but I just planned to put it away before I went to bed. I am sure you can guess where this is going. I found it still in the crock pot the next morning, a little dry but very well done. Next I shredded it up for barbequed beef, added the sauce and thought I had redeemed this poor roast. As a quick dinner later in the week, I pulled it out and thought I just had to warm it up. With my impatience with cooking I sometimes turn the burner up high to get it going and then turn it down. One of the kids had a question in the other room and I went to help and forgot about our yummy dinner. Scott wasn’t home that night to be a good advocate for the kids, anything not stuck to the bottom I deemed as good and still fed to my family. I have scrubbed and soaked that pan but there still seems to be a few charred remains that may never come off.

Mind you I don’t ruin everything, but it is those random times that blow my confidence. Today I made sugar cookies, and after a little coaching from Scott’s mom I think I cooked them just right. They are just barely brown on the bottom, and as soft as can be. I have yet to finish the frosting, so we won’t call it a success yet. Samantha’s birthday cake turned out alright but she did notice that the frosting looked a little melted; I will try to add more sugar for the cookies. Wish me luck!

Happy Half-Birthday!

When Samantha was about 3 1/2 she was sent a random package by her grandma. She wanted to know what was so special and looking at the calendar I realized that it was her half birthday! A random coincidence, but that is when the little tradition in our family began. Back then I think we were also looking for a good reason to make desserts so we also made a cake that day.

Well today is Alexander's half birthday. Apparently Scott's was a few days ago, but sometimes the adults get missed. We had a busy fun day so we never got around to the fun dessert part, but he is little and really there are no expectations for these days. Just a fun day to say you’re special.

Today he turned 18 months old... going onto three or four. This little guy has no clue that he just walked out of the baby phase and should now be in the toddler phase. He sees his older siblings and thinks he should be doing what they are doing.

Just a few examples:

• When we are in the kitchen close to dinner time or if I am cooking, he grabs plates out of the dish washer places them on the table (not in the right spots yet) and then climbs on a chair and waits. I always feel bad when I have to put him in the high chair, but he is not quite ready for table manners anyway.
• When the kids pile in the car he tries to hid out in the back seat, and throws a fit when he has to sit in the car seat.
• At the store, he never wants to sit in the seat but he wants to hang on the side and ride like the big kids.
• Tonight out of convenience Alex got a shower with the rest of the kids. At first he was screaming but as soon as Jacob and the twins joined him he was as happy as could be.

He is talking up a storm and we are making a game out of interpreting what he is saying. Some of the gibberish actually comes close to real sentences and so we treat them as such. If it sounds like he just asked where something is, we will tell him. Sometimes he plays with our game, but true to his age he is starting to get really frustrated when we really don't understand what he wants. As a mother even if I do understand, I won't give in to the temper tantrums, so hopefully he will figure out they don't work soon.

This week my parents are in town to meet their new grand-daughter, Noelle and to attend her blessing tomorrow. They have made a lot of trips to Houston before and we thought we would show them something new. It was the perfect day to be outside and so we went to Brazos Bend. They did a little fishing before we got there and then we brought some bikes and the kids went Alligator hunting. We only found 4, but after the cold front this week I was surprised to find that many.
Following our adventures on the trails we went to Ci Ci's to satisfy little hungry tummies. Although Alex didn't get a fun home made dessert for his special day, at least he got a variety of choices. I think he liked the brownies best. I am excited for this next half year to come. Last week he spent half of church in the halls, next week I think we will try the nursery!