Yard Work Fun

BigGuy is loving the chore chart - why? Because he has more help in getting the yard work done. I am loving the chore chart because since the kids have responsibilities in the yard - and BigGuy is generally (not always because yard work is NOT just for the guys - although our direct yard freak guy neighbors have joked with BigGuy about "how do you get your wife to mow the lawn?" a bit) the overseer of the lawn because he enjoys it - having to assign the kids a job in the yard gets him out there and moving too. Yea for BigGuy.

The only downside to working the yard with the kids - aside from all the bending over - is the complaining.
* Although they like to dig holes and look for worms - digging holes for plants is not fun.
* Although they like push all the leave into a pile and jump into them - or arrange them into a fort - pushing them into a pile and them shoving them into lawn bags is a painful task.
* Although they LOVE to pick up every stick in the yard to figure out which is the best one for roasting a marshmallow (we do this every once in awhile in the fire pit) - picking sticks up and putting them into a tidy pile so the mower can go by is akin to having your fingernails pulled out in their minds.

So to keep them motivated - and because it is now warm enough - and because we only pay them $5 for a weekly allowance and some kid in the neighborhood would charge us much more for doing any one of these tiny tasks (hope the kids got too bored with this post to continue all the way down) - we use an extra ounce of motivation for yard chores. We say this, "At the end of picking up the dog poop - after you wash your hands - you can have an ice cream cone."


And then they are all about "what needs to be done?" Even TheKing - well....until he gets hold of the rake and then is placed on zipped up trampoline duty.