A Quarter, A Dime, A Nickel, and a Penny

I had the week of Thanksgiving off and had two days to myself while the kids were at daycare. I had grandiose plans of getting a lot done those two days. I started off Monday cleaning the house. At lunch, I figured I had worked hard and deserved a 'treat' so I picked up some fast food for lunch. About a half hour after eating, I was thinking that maybe fast food wasn't that great of an idea. Despite my best intentions, I cried uncle and gave up cleaning in exchange for a Mad Men marathon. Brian called later in the day and said not to worry about dinner, as he thought he had a bout of the stomach flu. I knew I was in trouble and that it wasn't the fast food that was making me ill.

By the time I picked up the girls from daycare, I was feeling pretty sick. Brian arrived home from work and after a five hour car trip that day, he was exhausted and white as a ghost. I couldn't wait for bedtime, but yet dreaded the thought of bedtime The thought of wrangling up the girls, getting them to change into PJs, reading books, and rubbing backs made me want to hide under the bed and not come out until the morning.

When it came time for bedtime, I went into our bedroom and rounded up some loose change. For Allison, knowing that she likes money, I gathered one of each type of coin and for Amelia I grabbed a few random coins.  I went into Allison's room first and put the money on her play kitchen table. I told Allison that if she was good and went to bed without any books or backrubs, the money was all hers in the morning. However, anytime we had to go back into her room, I was taking away a coin.  Allison was game...anything for money! Amelia was excited, however we had to go back into her room once because she was too busy playing with the coins I had left behind.

So, for the low cost of only $0.41 for Allison and $0.21 for Mia, I was in dreamland by 8:45 pm.  Not a bad price.  On a positive note, when Allison woke up the next morning, she wanted to put the money in her "church money box," a coin box that our church handed out to collect money for the Heifer Project. So despite the bad influence of bribing my children, maybe we are doing something right after all.