Update on The New Program

The New Program is so over.

Jonah was the only one dutifully recording his reading/homework/exercise hours each week and I have a feeling he was being generous with himself because he'd easily earn over 20 hours of screen time a week. With the buy back program, he'd end up with around $10 a week, which I thought was ridiculous. And then he'd play screen from 7am until I told him to go to bed, even if it was longer than his allotted time.

Isaac was writing down his hours, but he wasn't doing much homework/reading/studying. Somehow, he ended up with just as much screen time on Saturday as Jonah did, sans the money.

Ethan. We all just pretended Ethan was participating. He never wrote down any time, but he always ended up with a full day of screen on Saturday. In fact, the screen days were stretching beyond even 12 hours!

So I finally said Enough! We are going back to the old way. Screen can start at 9am and end at 8pm. No saving, no earning more, no getting money, no carrying over to next week.

So far I like this new, old program.

Except it's Sunday and I think everyone is upstairs playing Wii.

But it's quiet!

Halloween 2013

The older I get, the more I realize how stupid and confining my comfort zone is. I've been stepping out of it more and more, not because I feel like I have to, but because I really don't care anymore. It's a paradigm shift that would have been super to have about 20 years ago, but better late than never, right?

What better night to be uncomfortable than Halloween? Well, it wasn't exactly Halloween. It was Trunk or Treat which was October 24th. I had fun at the church party, even though I was super uncomfortable as a momentary center of attention (suddenly she remembers why she doesn't like to dress up), but after a while, I was just super uncomfortable in the giant blue wig that came with the Marge Simpson costume. A couple Advil later (keep a stash in the glove box because you never know!) and I was back in business.

Here's a side by side so you can see just how great the costume was:

And here's Isaac and his costume inspiration (Jonah was Samwise Gamgee):

And here's Ethan: