New summer rituals

This summer I've decided (we'll see how long it lasts) that the kids are old enough to start helping out at home. They have several jobs that have to be completed before bedtime, and they've been doing an excellent job at it! Of course there's motivation with those jobs - they're trying to earn "money" for vacation in San Antonio. Now I put money in "" because it's monopoly money.

These jobs that I'm talking about are actually chores that they need to do for their real money, and before they can watch tv or go play with friends. I told them that their jobs will last one week and then they need to pick another job for another week. This week Jack picked feeding the dogs breakfast (which I find interesting because that's usually Jason's job so now he's out of a job in the mornings. Guess I better find him another one. :) ). Caroline is vacuuming the bedrooms. Well this morning I heard Jack talking to the dogs and it sounded like he was struggling with something. Jason went to check it out and came back with Jack in tow letting me know that he was doing his job. Jack was soooo proud. Caroline rolled out of bed at about 8:00 a.m. and vacuumed her room before breakfast. So we'll see how this goes.

The other thing we've started doing is riding our bikes to places. For example, this morning the kids wanted to go to Kid's Club (it's the kids daycare at my gym). So we packed up water and a snack, their bike locks, my gym lock, Tweetie (Caroline's stuffed animal du jour), and the Nintendo DS and got on our bikes and headed to the gym. The kids did an excellent job of observing their bike rules. Jack, of course, whined and moaned the whole way to the gym because he felt his bike helmet made him look like a Dweeb. I reminded him several times that if he looked like a dweeb then he was a safe dweeb. He continued on and on until he asked me what the definition of a dweeb was. My response, "I don't really know, but if you look it up in the dictionary it'll have your picture there." He kind of giggled at that and I didn't hear anymore about how dweebish he looked.

It took maybe 10 minutes to get there (waiting for the light can be excruciating sometimes). They locked their bikes up like pros and we went into the gym. There were a few stressful moments when Caroline would stop abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk to complain that she was thirsty. I nearly ran her over once because she insisted that I ride behind her and she stopped (seriously there were skid marks on the sidewalk from where she stopped). I worked out for about an hour and picked them up. They both had their shoes on and were ready to go (very unusual -- I usually get shoes dumped on me because they don't want to wear or carry them). We went out and sat on a bench. It was about 10:30, so I'd packed them a snack of watermelon and cantaloupe. While they ate I took them each over one at a time and helped them unlock their bikes. When they finished we got on our bikes and headed home. It was definitely much easier going home than going to the gym. It was all downhill. They had a good time and want to do it again. Our next bike ride will be going up to the 7 Eleven for a Slurpee.