So proud of my angels!

You may be wondering what this is...

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We have to back up to one Monday night in January. We were gathered around the kitchen table, each person with a paper cup and this bottle of root beer. We were having Family Home Evening. For those not familiar with it, it's where we gather the whole family once a week and spend some time together. Among other things, it usually has a lesson. We tend to lean towards things our kids need to work on, I think for the last 8 years the lessons are primarily "How to be reverent in church" and "Praying 101." This particular night the lesson fell on Dave. He opened the root beer (a family favorite) and made sure everyone had a cup. He began asking us questions and every time you answered a questioned correctly, he'd pour root beer into your cup - more or less it was drinking game, only we opted for the non-alcoholic version! He asked several different types of questions, but mostly he focussed on ways that we could serve others. We continued to play the game until the root beer was gone. He then asked the kids if they liked getting presents at Christmas. They all nodded and he told them that there were many children whose parents could not buy them gifts. He then challenge the kids to fill the root beer bottle during the year with spare change so that we could use the money at the end of the year to help a family in need. The kids excitedly agreed to help any way they could.

This brings us to yesterday. The weather was beautiful and boys decided to have a lemonade stand. I agreed to supply the lemonade and cups (although they had to agree to pay me 75¢ for the lemonade and 10¢ for the cups after they had earned some money). With all their supplies they walked up to the corner. About 30 minutes later, they came home with lemonade gone and money in their pockets. By this point there were now 2 other boys that had helped out so we they needed a little help figuring out how much each got. I first took out the money that was mine and then helped them divide up the rest. When all was said and done each had earned 51¢ for 30 min. worth of work. I reminded them to pay their tithing and walked out of the room. Within 5 minutes, Carter had given all of his money to his sister. "Why did you do that?" I asked. "Mom, she doesn't ever get a chance to earn her own money." I was very proud. A couple minutes after that, Spencer came into the kitchen and started dropping money into the root beer bottle. I smiled and said, "that's nice of you." He said, "I just want to help poor people have what they need." I was VERY, VERY proud. I am a lucky mom!