BYUFan

Nancy and I have been thinking about the best ways to teach our children how to work. This past week we instituted a new chore program. Each day the kids have daily chores that they need to complete. If they complete their chores they get points. Once they’ve earned up enough points they get a treat. Even me and Mrs. Fan get points for doing some of our daily chores. The kids also get points for attitude. Attitude points are completely subjective and can be taken away if they whine, are naughty, etc. Kind of like House Points in Harry Potter’s world. Once the entire collective family earns a certain amount of points then we get to do a family activity like go bowling or miniature golfing or something fun like that. We need 2,000 total family points in order to do an activity. I figured it would take about 5 or 6 weeks to earn up 2,000 points.

On Saturdays each kid has major cleaning chores to do. I tried to devise the chore lists such that it will take each kid about two hours to do their chores. There are no points for doing Saturday chores. Saturday chores are just part of the price you pay for being in the family.

This past Monday we had a special Family Home Evening where I explained the new chore program, and the rewards, to the kids. They did pretty good throughout the week although Buddy lost his attitude points every single day except Friday. He was also grounded for the entire weekend from playing with friends so that should tell you the kind of week he had. Overall it worked pretty well. The kids needed the usual pushing and prodding but they did their chores and towards the end of the week they started to do them without as much prodding.

This Saturday was our first day of doing Saturday chores. I thought we would get a lot of whines and moans and groans from the kids but we had a family meeting this morning and gave out the assignments and the kids set about doing their work without any complaning. Mrs. Fan and I helped the youngest two kids with their chores and helped the other kids with things like getting the cleaning supplies out of the cupboards and such. I was so pleased and surprised that they worked hard for two hours without complaint that at lunchtime I awarded an extra 100 bonus points, 5% of the total needed for an activity, to our family total. It’s probably too early to call the program a long-term success but I would say the first week was an outstanding success.

You may have noticed that most posts have been updated to replace our names with nicknames. This was a small measure to provide a bit of anonymity. No, I’m not terribly worried about people knowing who we are – if you know us then you know us. I just thought the nicknames would act as a bit of a roadblock for any true online whackos out there. I’m not willing to password protect the blog so the nicknames seemed like a reasonable security addition.

For some reason I love to take pictures of my flowers each spring because I think they are very pretty. Here are some of them that I took recently. Which one of these pictures do you like the best?

Flower #1

Flower #2

Flower #3

Flower #4

Flower #5

We decided to have Luppin’s birthday party in May because we were gone on vacation on her official day. Actually on her birthday we were visiting the Capitol building in Washington D.C. and being led around by Representative Chaffetz’s staffers. This year she got to have a friend party so she was really excited. We invited seven girls and all but one showed up.

At the party we started off by putting stickers on our princess crowns. Then we got the party going by playing the candy bar matching game. If they matched two of the same candy bar pictures, they got the actual candy bar. After that game we played pin the tail on the donkey. They had a hoot seeing the funny places the tail got stuck to. After that we had cake and ice cream. It is funny because when I was a kid I remember the cake and ice cream were the best part, but the girls were more interested in jabbering than eating either cake or ice cream. I think I threw the bulk of it away in the garbage can. After the cake came the presents. I think this was very fun. I had each of the girls one at a time bring up the present she got for Luppin and then each of their presents got spotlighted and I could write down who brought what. After the all the presents were opened and before they could tear into them and get Barbie/Polly pocket stuff everywhere, we went to the basement to do the pinata. Because we have an unfinished basement it was easy to tie the rope up on the ceiling and have the girls whack away at it. I think they liked this game the best of all. Luppin did want to play musical chairs, but we ran out of time. All in all a very good party.

It is an end of an era. All my kids have attended Challenger School and at the end of this school year my last baby will have finished her stint at this great preschool.

On May 15th I got to attend the last spring program I will ever go to with one of my kids. I went alone so I had to take both the still pictures and the video. I still haven’t downloaded the video, but when BYUFan has the time maybe he can post the video.

Here is Luppin as the sun coming out after the rain. They were going pretty fast so this picture is blurry.

Here she is again doing actions to a song.

Every spring BYUFan and I sign up all of our kids for some sport through the county rec center. This year instead of having the kids all in one sport we had them in three different sports. Blee and Anne chose Volleyball, Texas and Luppin chose soccer, and Buddy chose Flag Football.

Last night was Buddy’s last game and I finally remembered to bring my camera. I wish BYUFan could have been there because I am not very good at taking pictures that turn out. Maybe next time we sign Buddy up for football BYUFan will be around to take the pictures.

The first two pictures are of Buddy attempting to kick off at the beginning of the game. He was not too successful so another boy had to do it after buddy had his chance.

getting ready to kick

Good Try Buddy!!

Usually Buddy is in the front line trying to keep the other guys away from his guy who has the ball. This time Buddy got to be the one with the ball. I think he did a great job.

Here comes the ball!

GO BUDDY GO!!!!!!!!!!

Sam had a lot more fun in flag football than he did in soccer. I am sure he wants to sign up again soon.

While doing my secretary work this past Sunday, Luppin’s teacher comes up to me and tells me a funny thing she did in class the week before. They were having a lesson about the word of wisdom and the teacher was talking about how tobacco is not good for you and that you shouldn’t chew it or smoke it. Luppin raised her hand and began to tell the class how her daddy ate tobacco with everything. Daddy has Tobacco on his eggs, his tomato sandwiches and he uses it almost every night with his dinner. After the teacher stopped laughing because of her comment, she explained to sweet Luppin that it was Tabasco not Tobacco that her daddy used.

After replacing my backflow valve last spring I vowed to remove the entire valve in the fall so that it wouldn’t have any chance of freezing during the winter. Unfortunately, good intentions in spring are often forgotten when summer and fall roll around. Even though I turned off the water I forgot to remove the backflow valve. Yesterday (Friday) I turned on the water and checked the valve and it appeared to be fine – no major leaks of water. “Great!”, I thought, “I lucked out and survived the winter without freezing the valve”. Today Mrs. Fan was working outside and noticed that water was dripping off the valve. Not a major leak but just a slow drip drip drip. It turns out that 3 of the 4 testcocks on the valve had cracked.

Can you spot the crack?

Interestingly, each testcock had cracked in the exact same location – right in the middle of the “China” stamp. Read into that what you will. I got online and ordered three testcock replacements – at $8.00 each plus shipping it came to $30. Not great but better than $250 for a completely new valve. South Jordan requires these things be above ground which is really irritating. At $250 a valve and weighing 10lbs each they are often stolen for their bronze and copper salvage value (I was smart enough to put my valve in the back yard). In addition, the testcocks on the valve provide ready access for a terrorist or some other whacko to easily pump something back into the municipal water supply. In addition the RPZ (Reduced Pressure Zone) valves required by South Jordan are supposed to be tested every year by a certified tester at homeowner’s expense.

They’re also hard to keep from freezing. If I wait until the last spring freeze to turn the water on outside it would be well into May after Mother’s day. Unfortunately, plants need water in April in the desert – even if it may still freeze occasionally – so my only options are to constantly check the weather and shut the water on and off when a freeze is likely or to somehow try and insulate the valve above ground. If the valve was underground with a cover over it the April temperatures would be much less likely to freeze it.

I like living in South Jordan but the requirement to have an RPZ assembly 12″ above ground and inspected every year is just an artifact of South Jordan’s agricultural history (i.e. industrial fertilizers, farm animal waste, and field runoff) and is unnecessary for suburban residential developments (I’m also just mad at myself that I didn’t open the testcocks to drain the valve and keep it from freezing).

Last Friday I was able to stand in for Buddy’s grandparents at the first grade annual grandparent’s/VIP day. This was the culmination of all the first graders work on memorizing poems and songs during the school year. Buddy was so excited about this day that he kept reminding me about it constantly. I got there about ten minutes before it started and the gym was already about half full. Since it was only me, I was able to snag a lone chair in the front on the side. Luckily I chose the side that Buddy was on so I could take a pretty good video of him singing. After all the fun was over everyone got to go with their student to their classroom and see all the work they have done and also get a roll and some juice. Buddy was excited to show me who he sat by and all the fun things about his classroom. I think the best part for Buddy was being able to leave school early and go and get a treat with mom. Buddy, you are the best first grader ever!

Here is Buddy getting ready to sing

Here is Buddy in his classroom

Our seeds came from Burpees while I was in Hawaii. It was a bummer too because last week was the perfect weather for early spring planting of pea seeds. This week it’s wet and rainy. I was wondering how people manage to sow seeds in early spring when the soil is so wet and then I recently read a helpful hint that said if you prepare a section of your garden in fall with rows and such then you won’t need to actually till it in the spring but you can go out and just plant right in the prepared section without really working the soil. I hope I remember this tip (and have the gumption to try it) when fall rolls around.

8 peat pots with two seeds each

Tonight was the first night I had a bit of free time so I got my broccoli seeds planted. I’ve been reading a bit about broccoli and it turns out you’re supposed to plant your transplants outside in early spring. I had been planting my seeds in early spring and then putting the transplants out when it was way too warm. Maybe that’s why I fail to ever get a single head of broccoli. Well, that and the cutworms last year that ate my beautiful broccoli plants. Unfortunately, I always read about things after it’s too late to do anything about it and it turns out that the time to start my broccoli seeds passed several weeks ago. Thus, I started them late again this year. We’ll probably fail to get any broccoli for the fourth consecutive year but I’m too stubborn to quit now. I don’t really have a strong passion for broccoli. It’s just now that I’ve tried and failed a few times, I’m even more determined to grow at least one head of broccoli before I exile it with the other outcasts to the land of “Not Worth Planting”. There it will live in infamy along with lettuce, cauliflower, zucchini, and squash.