Thursday, June 26, 2014

Father's Day - The YETI Cooler

Okay, so it's a little late to be posting about Father's Day, but I don't seem to be able to do anything on time these days. I think I need this:


You know if you search "Sorry I'm Late shirts" in Google images you get images of people who have taken the time to style their Sorry I'm Late shirts, i.e.:


I am late because I left my shoes in a wooded area and couldn't find them.

When you take the time to style your Sorry I'm Late shirt and make an entire Sorry I'm Late ensemble (and then take a picture), it probably explains why you are late.

The creator of this ensemble had another issue:


in that she had to time travel back to 1995 to create her outfit. I mean, I can't tell the scale of that backpack, but I'm pretty sure it's one of those tiny backpacks that was all the rage in the mid 90's. Felicity and Baby Spice wore them and they were perfectly balanced by four inch-high platform sandals. I recently saw a picture of Miley Cyrus toting a tiny backpack, which means she's ruined both teddy bears and tiny backpacks forever. 

Obviously, you all can tell that I'm late with my Father's Day post because I got "busy" Googling, "Sorry I'm Late shirts" and looking up pictures of 1990's celebrities wearing tiny backpacks. 

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Throw the Tiger in the Whirlpool: Why I love our á la Carte Chore Board

I have not been very good about giving the children an allowance for doing daily chores. I started a few times but got tired of nagging them to do the chores, and instead of leaving their chores un-done so they could bear witness to their slovenly ways, I'd succumb to my mild OCD and make their beds and clean up their messes. Sometimes, I would pay them even though they hadn't actually completed the chores which taught them nothing about getting paid for working, but instead primed them for a future as county road crew workers. We've always ended up back in the same place, scrapping the allowance and me doing everything.

Recently, I took a different approach, one that gave the kids the option of earning money on a per-chore basis. I think that when I've finished telling you all about the how this system has worked, you'll agree that it's vastly superior than just giving a straight allowance. I made a chore board where I post different chores that I would like the children to perform and assign each chore a monetary value. So, making your bed gets you .25 and taking out the garbage is .75. Value is determined by frequency, grossness, and duration of a given chore. This valuation system is no different from society where long-haul commercial fisherman earn more than Justin Beiber. Oh wait, no. Clearly my value system needs some tweaking to put it in line with American society. Five cents for scrubbing the toilet and ten million dollars for making up racist song lyrics. Better now. Anyway, here are some (as yet unperformed) tasks on our chore board:


This way the kids are earning money only for the work they've actually done (novel concept, I know). I wish I'd thought of this years ago because would be a freaking millionaire.