let us all speak kind words baseball

What kind of game is that you ask?  I'll tell you.  First, let me explain how this got started because I want to give credit where credit is due.  I started yelling.  Not at the tv or at cars or at the computer when it was slow.  I started yelling at my kids.  A lot.  I think it increased when Tim began traveling for work.  I'll blame him.  Tim has actually pegged my exact yell and loves teasing me about it.  He says that I start out soft and increase into a yell.  "Please get your clothes off the floor" type thing.

I knew it had to end.  After an incredibly inspiring General Conference I decided that I would stop yelling.  I've done it!  {Okay, except for that one time when Parker was choking Cooper while forcefully trying to put his hood on his head, but I think that my yell was justified as a life saving method.}

I noticed that I wasn't the only one yelling, but mostly I noticed that my boys love potty talk and some a lot of unkind words.  So, I thought it might be fun to challenge the entire family.

We started this challenge on Friday and the weekend proved to be quite hilarious.  The first day the boys were still a little unclear on the rules.  "Is it okay to say butt if you are quoting the movie Shrek?"  Oh boy.  We had a lot of hypothetical questions going on in our house and tons of tattle-telling.  I wondered if this game was such a good idea.

Parked asked, "Mom, can we say bc?"

"Hmm, I don't know, what does that mean?" 

"Butt crack,"  Parker proudly responded.

"Where did you learn that?"

Payton and Parker in unison said, "Grandpa Ock."

Thanks Dad!

Tim is such a good sport to play along with my silly games.  I'd like to think he's playing along, but I'm pretty sure he's mostly mocking me.  He loves to yell "Steeerike" all day long.  After spending the evening with Tim's family on Saturday night they all enjoyed playing/mocking the game as well.  People were striking out left and right while watching sporting events.  My Mom also called last night to see how Parker's game was going.  He was bragging to her that he was the first one to get a strike.

In all seriousness, I love when we can do something that is fun as a family and hopefully {fingers crossed} learn a little lesson while we're at it.  Most of all, I'm happy to report that I'm not yelling.  It's not even a temptation anymore...unless of course we have another life threatening emergency.


A few sidenotes:  We are all umpires.  We decided the time line is way to long and that we will probably all strike out way before then, but we're trying.  We are choosing the prizes together as a family.  Also, we're going to talk about some ways we could possibly reverse the strike {doing something nice for someone}.  Obviously, we're flexible around here. 

I'd love to know if you have some good ideas on how to get a house full of boys and Mom to speak more kind words?  What are some of your behavior modification strategies?

family home evening chart

In January I had this big elaborate idea that I was going to plan our Family Home Evenings out for the entire year. I would spend the afternoon going through the many various lesson ideas I had and decide what lessons I would do each week of the year. I would type all this up in an excel spreadsheet and be the most organized Family Home Eveninger you'd ever seen. I sat down and started going through all my stuff when I realized that this was not the point of FHE. Once again, the perfectionist in me was missing the point. Family Home Evening should be based on the needs of our family at that particular time, not planned months in advance. Family Home Evening should be something that my children feel involved in, as opposed to me preaching to them every week.

I found this silly little chart that our kids got at a primary activity last year. I immediately colored it {I mean, one of my kids did}, laminated it and then printed off a picture of our family. I cut out our heads and laminated those too. I attached Velcro adhesives to the chart and the pictures. This project took me less than 30 minutes to do and it has completed changed the spirit of our Family Home Evenings. Everybody loves having a part, which we always tried to do before, but never did that well. My boys beg to do the lessons. Who knew?

I've learned that sometimes the big elaborate things we try to do are just wasteful, they are completely missing the point and detract from the spirit. This simple little chart was all our family needed to have successful Family Home Evenings...together!

children's chores

I am not great at having my kids help me clean around the house and doing weekly or daily chores. My boys are very responsible. They make their beds every morning, brush their teeth, get dressed themselves and always keep their room clean, but it's the other household chores they don't often do. Not because they don't like too, but because I don't let them. They absolutely love cleaning the toilets, vacuuming and dusting so I usually try to do it when they are not around so that they won't ask to help. What's wrong with me? I'll tell you. I'm a perfectionist. I've recently realized that this is not helpful for my children. I know that I need to involve my children in the household responsibilities whether I like it or not. It is my responsibility to teach them, not to make sure they have a perfectly clean house to live in.

I have tried to establish different chore routines for our family, but none of them have worked with our lifestyle. The only day we could all clean together would be Saturday's and that is impossible with our sport schedules.

I've tried to assign my children to certain areas of the home, but they always get jealous of what somebody else is doing. Also, I've noticed that a lot of times things were getting done that didn't need to be. Therefore, I came up with a solution that I could have complete control over, but still allow the boys to help. I would chose a Daily Chore for my children. I've tried to do this before, but was always too lazy about it. I would make up silly little tasks for my kids to do just to make them feel like they were helping. However, this wasn't teaching them anything.

In order to give more responsibility to my kids and also make myself accountable to actually let them help, I typed up and laminated a bunch of chores that always need to be done around the house so that I don't have to try to come up with something off the top of my head. Each day I put up a chore on their charts depending on the needs of our home. We've been doing this for over a week and it is working out fabulous. My kids are so excited to see what their daily chore is and I am forced to pick something and have them do it. It has been more work for me right now because I have to teach them the proper way to do things, but I know this will pay off down the road. Soon enough I will have amazing little workers who can unload the dishwasher, dust the house and vacuum the floors just the way I like it {or close enough}! It's also helping me realize that letting go of control is not so bad. These boys really can help out and do a great job.

Here is how I implemented our new chore system. I made a "Vacation Countdown Calendar." We have done this every time before we've gone on a trip and it's worked so well for my kids. We are planning to go to Disneyland in June. The boys use these charts as a way to earn money for the trip. If they complete all of their "Jones POWER responsibilities" on the left side of the chart they earn a sticker for the day. Each sticker is worth 50 cents. If the boys get a sticker every single day they will be able to earn $40 to spend on the trip. If they don't earn a sticker one day, they just won't earn that money so if they choose not to do their chores one day {which has happened in the past} they just get less money. I don't have to nag my boys to do something. They have a choice. They have a reward or a consequence. It's really a best case scenario all around. Tim & I figure that we would spend at least $40 on souvenirs for them anyway. So, why not have them earn it?

Here is the chart I use to start with:

This is the Daily Chore portion that is laminated so that I can easily transfer it to future months chore charts.

I pasted the calendar on to a 12x12 card stock paper.

Then I let the boys personalize them.

Both of the boys charts hang in our kitchen near the pantry where they easily see them all day long. They are constantly reminded that they have a goal they are working towards.

My absolute favorite part of this chart is that I incorporated all 5 aspects of our family motto. I was trying to think of something I could do for "enthusiastic," I thought of things that make me happy; exercise and serving others. I added these two things to the boys chart and it's been their favorite thing. They have been sharing with each other so well. They are constantly telling me all the nice things they are doing for each other. They are also doing push-ups and sprints every night. It's pretty cute!

Now, let's see how long this lasts?

family plan

I'm on my third day as CEO and I can say that my first two days went amazingly well. Having a new mindset has completely changed the way I feel about what I'm doing. I think that I was having a case of the Stay at Home Mom Doldrums. I was needing to reinvent my seemingly mundane life. My life hasn't really changed that much, but my attitude towards it has and now I'm feeling more accomplished and better organized.

My first order of business was updating the Jones Family Plan. We originally created a family plan two years ago. Ceomom.com has the model I used to create our family plan. We followed their guidelines and did this together as a family. It seemed super cheesy at first {which is usually not a problem for me}, but it's amazing how useful this family plan has been. When we made this plan we started by setting goals; daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals. We've discovered over the past couple years that some of these goals work really well for us and some don't work at all. Ceomom also has a great article on how to set goals as a family. After setting the goals, we incorporated them into our family plan.

One of the crucial parts of our family plan is the Mission Statement or Family Motto. We all worked together to come up with our motto. We didn't want our motto to be complicated {our boys were 6, 4 and 2 months old at the time}. We wanted it to be simple, yet reflective of our family values. We decided we should stick to one word. After much deliberation, the one word we ended up choosing was "POWER," which is an acronym for Polite, Obedient, Workers, Enthusiastic and Righteous. Ironically, yet so special, after later talking to my Mom we realized that our family {the one I grew up in} had the EXACT SAME family motto with almost the same exact acronyms. How had I forgotten? {Clint, Krista, Erika...do you remember that?} Suddenly, our family motto became perfect!

This family motto has become an incredible tool in our family. Whenever my boys are getting out of control, fighting with each other or whenever there is tension in our home, I can call all the boys together to do a "Jones POWER" cheer. That's right, we do cheer's around here. It's more of a huddle, "go team" type cheer. My boys absolutely love it and it immediately bonds our family back together. I usually give the boys a quick pep talk about team work or whatever the situation demands and then I remind them that we have "Jones POWER." Whenever I say those two words it always puts a smile on their face. No matter what was going on before, we all put our hands in the circle and yell...

"Jooooones POWER!"

I hesitated sharing this for fear of the harassment that I might receive and because it really is a special, personal thing that we do together as a family. I wanted to share it though because it has become an extremely effective tool in our home for bringing our family together. This silly little motto, I believe, brings my children security and comfort. When we put our hands together it actually helps us all feel more united to each other.

As we sat down together on Monday night and reviewed our family plan, I realized that this company really is on the right track. I feel so blessed to be the CEO of an already successful business. I've realized that so many times in our lives, it's just making a few tiny adjustments that make all the difference.