One of the things we did that may have proven to be "right" this summer involved a lap tray we used as a dry-erase board. That board became "The Big List".
As the summer approached this year, we were trying to finish up a construction project on the back of our home. The goal was to turn our screened porch into a sun-room. You can read more about it on R.'s blog God's Design Not Mine. The construction portion was nearing completion and that meant there was work for us to do; so we needed help or free time from the kids or something! In addition to the room, there were other projects that had gone lacking while we concentrated on the room: things like a cluttered garage that appeared ready to spawn its own 1950's style, B-Grade science-fiction movie and the rains we had been blessed with were now resulting in some jungle-like growth in what used to be our landscaping.
With this in mind we came up with "The Big List" which was designed to give us specific "bite-sized" goals that we could accomplish as a family. In some cases - Mom and I explained - we would need everyone participating in some fashion; in other areas, we just needed to be left alone for a time.
We set a target date and began to deliberate about how we would reward ourselves. Each week (well almost) when we did family devotion on Sunday night, we would mark things off "The Big List" and talk about what we might do (of course we included devotion stuff too - this is just the best time for us to have family discussions sometimes).
We decided we would do some sort of Bonus if we completed the project before our stated deadline.
As we neared the final weekend before the deadline, I took a couple days off. We worked and I really had a lot of help from Ab and AA. We cleaned out the garage thoroughly, Mom painted the interior of the new room, we inventoried and delivered a small truck load of stuff to the Salvation Army (freeing up -for the first time in weeks - the landing on our bonus room stairs), we performed a "cursory" cleaning of the siding on portions of the house (we deliberately put that word cursory in there so we could limit the job if necessary).
... and we finished ...
... a day early!!
Hoorah!!
It was a good feeling. Our bonus was a trip to Etowah Indian Mounds and a picnic (as you may have read about earlier here ).
I think it was a couple of weeks before we held our "official" celebration including steaks on the grill and followed by a little ceremony.
It took place in the new sun room and we took turns marking off the remaining items on "The Big List".
We never really settled on one specific event as our official reward so a week or so ago we took an evening trip to Stone Mountain for the Laser Show . . . .
. . . and again - a picnic.
There is really nothing like working together and celebrating together. R. has always been big on setting and achieving goals . . . I, on the other hand, have always loved the concept and the exhilaration of goal setting but was not always keen on the follow-through. I hope this was a lesson our kids will remember about sharing in a common goal.
As I said, it may just have been one thing we got right this summer.
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