The next day I got violently ill...
Then it rained for the next 6 weeks...
By the time decent weather for working outside returned, my almost-ready-for-grass-seed area was a dense jungle of weeds - very overwhelming to look at... And then we found inspiration in last Sunday's Rodney & Jim comic strip - Yesterday Cindy told all the kids that they would get to spend today pulling weeds!
Now, when they got started, as you can probably imagine, they weren't very motivated... So Cindy came up with the brilliant idea of paying each kid One Dollar per Bucket of weeds pulled. THAT got them moving!
Chelsey and Kaylee were a team, and earned $30!!
Tyler pulled $12 worth of weeds!
Andy tried to close his eyes and pretend it wasn't happening... but he still came away with $12.50 by the end of the day!
When I got home from work, I was shocked to see that both of our large yard waste bins were full to the brim! And the jungle??
The jungle is cleared! Ready for the rest of the topsoil to be spread, and the grass to be planted.
Great job to all of our kids!! I won't mind one bit paying out for this job!!
...oh yeah, one other thing... Tyler was very good at pulling weeds, but he also found some other stuff...
His plan was that garbage would be worth more than weeds... NOT QUITE!! But thanks for picking them up just the same!
Oh Mike I feel so much better now as a parent. For years we have made our kids pick up buckets of pine cones out of the lawn...sometimes for X Box playing time and then sometimes for 5 cents a cone. We tired to just make them do it, which works with one child, but the other two...well they sit on the lawn, throw a pinecone in, lay down on the lawn, throw a pincone in..."are we done now?" Money just works much better when you are dealing with the most hated job on the planet.
ReplyDeleteI think your dad brought that vtr to Kennewick once and showed my parents either Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi. I just remember the picture was really bad. Maybe it was something different. Oh, and we have the same jungle in our yard. We had the missionaries over for dinner and they said they could clear our whole lot in half a day. I said when do you want to come and do that. :)
ReplyDeleteWow, your kids earned some big bucks!!
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to see the finished product. The grass will look lovely on that corner :)
Wow. You pay good money. Do you hire them out?
ReplyDeleteIt looks like the next time we come to visit, that Casa de Brinkerhoff will look even better than the last time.
ReplyDelete