Summer Mail

Here we are again. The first official day of summer at our house. I say official because truly it's the first day that I am home alone with the kids from 7:30am until 5:30pm or so. Cpt Wade was off on Friday and Monday for the 4 day so when he put on his uniform and walked out the door this morning, my summer officially began! Dear Jesus, give me strength!

A few weeks ago I took a trip to SC for my sister-in-law's baby shower. It's probably just me, but when I go visit a city that has a store or two that I don't have here, I make it a priority to visit those particular stores. For me, in SC, it's World Market and Trader Joe's. Neither of which is technically in SC. I also planned in a stop at Ikea in Atlanta and toured more of Georgia Tech in my attempt to get to Ikea and to find a Starbucks than I really ever needed to see. (Please dear children do not attend school in Atlanta! I will not come visit you!)

On my little venture to World Market, I bought this cute little metal mail box and had an epiphany of sorts. This cute little mail box would become the focus of my attempts to keep it together this summer. Let's be real. Summers are hard! I know there are mothers who look forward to summer and having all this time with their kids at home with them. Newsflash, I'm not one of those mothers! I love these little people that the Lord gave me and they bring a lot of joy to my life, but as a matter of fact, I pretty much suck at being a good summer mom! One of the major reasons I suck at being a good summer mom is that I am an introvert to the core. That's not an excuse. Believe me, I can put on my social, fun, outgoing face when I need to, but I much prefer to be in a quiet place, alone. These 4 kids of mine all have big personalities and big opinions, and I do mean BIG! They can be emotionally and mentally exhausting - and any introverted mother who tells you otherwise probably isn't telling the truth.

Back to the cute little mail box...

 Every morning, except Sundays, the kids will get "Summer Mail." 

Their summer mail will consist of a checklist of activities and chores that they must complete each day. If I'm on my A-game, they'll get some other little surprises depending on what we have planned or going on each day. By surprises, I mean gift cards to restaurants we may go to that day, little pieces of chocolate, a note telling them we're going somewhere special, or just a note telling them that they ARE special, etc. I'm also going to encourage them to use the mail box to write kind words to each other.

My thought and hope is that they will look forward to opening the mail box each morning to see what's inside. I never know with this crowd what is going to speak to their hearts and what is going to make them cringe!

Today, they received a letter explaining the system and their first daily checklist. The letter let them know that each completed checklist is worth 75 cents! We're not McDonald's and there are no unions dictating the required wage at our house. They can make $4.50 a week. They'll save some of that, give some of that and use the rest at their own discretion, i.e. pool food. I'm probably going to add in a few big ticket 'chores' along the way so they can have a little more cash in their pockets.

I made the checklists using a simple Excel spreadsheet that won't change much week to week. We'll loosely follow Clean Mama's cleaning schedule so their additional daily chores, other than unloading the dishwasher, cleaning their rooms and putting clean clothes away, will somewhat coincide with her plan. (Mondays - Bathrooms, Tuesdays - Vacuum, Wednesdays - Dusting, etc.) Since the schedules won't change, I can pretty much print all of their checklists out in advance. Of course, I can tweak as we go along.

Part of their daily activities include reading, writing and math. They are to read every day, which they pretty much do regardless of being told. JB will keep a reading log and the others will keep a log that includes a summary and unknown words lists. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, they'll do some sort of math problems, either from old workbooks sitting around here or from some of the online math programs they still have access to. On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, they'll all write some sort of entry in a journal. I had them all pull out half used notebooks from school to use as their summer journals. What else am I going to do with them?

Since today is the first day of this experiment at our house, 2 kids were super excited. One was practically in tears, probably because part of the rules include limiting time on kindles and watching TV! World rocked!! It's about 2:15pm and for the most part, their checklists are pretty much done. Some of their jobs can't be completed until after dinner. We'll have to work on time management going forward so they understand that the point of some of this is to keep them occupied throughout the day, not just the first hour of the day!

In an effort to help them with their tech-free times, their checklists include playing a game (forced brother sister bonding), spending 30 minutes in charge of Harper (free childcare - I learned a thing or two from faithfully watching 19 Kids and Counting), making something (color, draw, legos, etc.), and of course playing outside. Today I took JB and Harper to the playground and JB asked me if that counted as playing outside. These legalistic little monsters are going to keep this list to the letter!

I'll keep you posted on how this works. I'm the one who has to keep it going and to remember to give them their money each week.  A little quote has been floating around social media that says, "No one is more full of false hope than a mom with a new chore chart!" I happen to be very realistic about my endeavors with chore charts, systems, etc. I know they only work if I make them work, which is why I have avoided anything remotely related to a chore system in the past. It's not the kids. It's my follow through. If it fails, it's all on me! Today I'm full of false hope!