Weekend Fun

We've had a good weekend. Aaron's folks are in town for a visit, so we are enjoying more grandparent time than we normally get. Unfortunately, today is their last day in town and we will have to wait until after Christmas to see them again. I keep forgetting to take pictures of the things we do - I'll try to get better with that.

One new thing that got implemented this weekend is this chore chart.

I've been feeling stressed lately with the amount of work I try to get done and haven't fully utilized three good resources at my fingertips - my kids! So, enter the chore chart. Currently, they are in charge of keeping the dining room and living room clean and they do a good job with it. But there's much more in the house to do, so I added to their responsibilities. They are all responsible for having four cleaning sessions in their bedrooms (time-limited according to their age - 5 to 20 min), cleaning off the stairs (our catch-all place for things that need to go upstairs), vacuuming, dusting, cleaning the bathroom counter/sink, and helping with dishes. There is a monetary reward at the end of each week (or a special treat/event) and if they don't get all their chores done for the week, then their reward will be less than the others - this week is $1.50 for the prize, but it's a quarter off for each chore that is uncompleted. And I'm going to work hard at not reminding them to get their work done - I might give one or two reminders - especially for Abby, but the other two will learn to be self-motivated, or reap the consequences. :)

On other cute news, Aaron's mom gave the girls these super cute Native American hair holders. This picture doesn't do them justice. They look adorable in real life. The girls love them and wore them all day on Saturday, and all day on Sunday -even wore them during soccer games - though they started to come out partway through the game. This has inspired them to want to become Indian princesses for Halloween. I will have to get busy and come up with a dress of some sorts for them to wear with it. I know Kay took a better picture of the girls with these in while they were wearing their nice Sunday clothes. I'll see if I can get ahold of that picture to post later.
This week is our final taper down to the marathon now. We ran for three miles this morning. Julie and I were reminiscing about how we used to run three miles as our daily run and feel like it was a long way. Now, three miles feels so small and like we haven't gotten a good workout. We have two more tiny runs of two miles later on this week. We keep feeling like we should be running more than that. Maybe I'll take some walks to keep my legs from feeling too antsy. Other things we'll be doing to try to prepare - going to bed early. This will probably be the hardest part for Aaron and me. Well, hard for Aaron mainly. I will happily go to bed at 9:30 anytime, but neither one of us sleeps well without the other one there, so we go to bed at the same time - and getting Aaron to bed before 10:30 is very difficult. He feels like he's missing out on things if he goes to bed early. I'm not sure what you miss out on since everyone else is asleep! I think I'm going to try to eat extra healthy this week too in order to help my body on this run. And so far, the weather forecast for Sunday looks to be decent. No rain in store and moderately warm temps too. Let's hope it hold out!