Ahhh...

Thank you, my friends, for being so honest. Sometimes I live under the heavy blanket of guilt over all the things I should be doing and am not doing... the person I should be by now and still am not. It's difficult. But a longtime friend revealed this crucial err in my thinking and reminded me that in Christ we are no longer condemned to live life like that. It was a perspective that had somehow escaped me for a long time, that has now given me a little freedom.

Knowing your thoughts and struggles are so similar to mine gives me some relief, like I can keep going because we're all in the same boat.

These were taken in Solvang, the Dutch community that I raved about early on in our adventure. It's about twenty miles from here; along that road is an ostrich farm which you can see from the road. We stopped to get a closer look and in order to go to the viewing area, you have a pay per person. We laughed about that, at how we could stand at the pay counter and watch then for free! The lady seemed a little strange, maybe overly protective of her business. She was selling strawberries too, which we gladly purchased before sneeking a closer peek at her *exhibit*.
So my children have long lists of things they need to buy in order to camp out in our backyard; things like lanterns, sleeping bags, canteens, you know, the important things. And they don't have a lot of money at their disposal, so they've been asking for ways to make money.

I have decided that hard work should be rewarded monotarily, but not chores. They are necessary for daily living and they should learn that responsibility is not always compensated in obvious ways. However, education is and so Dale and I both like to put challenges out there with dollar signs attached. For example, I offered the kids $5 to learn all the planets, $5 for all the continents, and then $5 for all the states and $5 for all the presidents. If they get all four, a total of $25. So far I've only paid out $15.

So anyway, today Jasmine asked if she could copy "The Princess Treasuries" long hand and get some money. I laughed, but then said, "If you copy the whole thing and can read it to me as you go, I'll give you $100." Now, you think that's steep, but it's 566 pages long, it takes about 30 minutes to READ the stories, so I figure it's about a years worth of writing, but if she finishes, she'll have perfect penmanship and a high school reading capacity. Besides, I can pay her off in recycling money at the end of the year.

Then Kennedy's ears start to perk up, "Mom, can I do it? Can I do it? I'll do it for $50!" I didn't see any value in the Princess Treasuries for Kennedy but we have a great kids' dictionary that has over 8oo pages of definitions in it, right? So I gave her the option to do 5 per page for $100. It's a great deal for spelling and learning word definitions! She is going to spend the rest of her free time, she says, working on this job. It's just like a job! she says. I am laughing and saying, "You know it's going to take a long time, right? It will be hard work." And they are already chattering excitedly about how rich they're going to be! It's so cool. I really hope they finish it. Kennedy will no matter if it takes her till next summer, but I wonder if Jasmine will still be working at in by the end of the week. She's not as determined as her sister; she'd rather be doing other, more fun things like *getting crunk*.