Bribes

You can only bribe your kids to do so many things. It’s limited. Like the amount of garlic that goes in spaghetti sauce or the length of time you can scrape ice off your windshield without gloves on. And so, I save my bribes for activities that I deeply believe will be good for my kids to try.

Today, the kids sang with their 4H Club at the county music festival. You wouldn’t know it to look at the picture of them singing or based on asking them about it, but it was a F*&@ing chore talking them into this activity.

The nice thing about being a parent for 13 years now is that I fully saw this coming. I knew right when I got the email from the club, asking if the kids would want to join in a group song, that my kids would say no straight away. Since the email only gave me a week, I skipped the part where I explain to the kids that they might have fun, that its good to try new things, etc.

I got home from work and said, “I need you to sing with the 4H Club, I willing to strike a deal with each of you.” Oh, how those eyes lit up! Sam just stood on the staircase gazing into his future. Ariel, who always has an internal list of things she wants to buy and do, knew right away that she wanted the next two books in her series. Fiona asked for a game of cards with me and “one day off church.” Which is funny, because we are batting every other week to monthly for church attendance at this time. She did clarify that she would go to her Grandma’s house, on a “church day where you all go, but I don’t have to do.” Sam concluded that he would like $10 in Minecraft money so he could explore some new areas. It didn’t really end there. There was intermittent moaning throughout the week about how I was MAKING them sing. Oh, the tyranny!

To add to my misdeeds, I also made them find shirts with no stains and jeans (to match the group). Don’t I know that jeans are the worst?!!!!

Blurg.

Anyhoo. Skip to today, they had a good time and alls well that ends well 🙂 I’m tired though, and maybe dry January is getting shortened to a two week break of beer/wine.

Happy Saturday!

Love,

Terra Rose