GUMBALLS GALORE

Today on my personal facebook page I mentioned something about our 

{Gumball Rewards System}. 

All my mommy friends were thinking... what?! What are you talking about?!

I started to share how we have used GUMBALLS in our beloved FAMILY COLORS to reward our kiddos for good behavior or chores, using positive reinforcement against undesirable behaviors, and then turning that into tracking our allowance at the same time... not to mention using the same gumballs as payment for things like iPad time and rescuing their toys that have been held hostage in "Daddy & Mommy's Ransom Box". 

Interested?! Well, then here we go...

Every Sunday, at the beginning of the week, each kiddo starts with TWENTY gumballs. The rest are in my "jar" (which is really a large, round vase). 

They can earn gumballs for doing great things...

The full list of gumball earnings

However, they can also LOSE gumballs for let's call it "poor" behavior...

"How To Lose Gumballs"

At the end of the week, each gumball left in their jar is worth a NICKEL. 

If they do absolutely nothing, and don't lose anything, they will 

still have their original 20 gumballs. 

That's a dollar! 

However, each child has the potential to get 50 gumballs 

(because that's how many I have in each color)... $2.50!!!

 I don't know how you all do allowance, but $2.50 is a lot for a 5 year old! 

I do feel the need to tell you all, however, that we have not EVER had anyone 

get more than 25 gumballs in a week.

 So, unless you have a particularly perfect child 

(in which case you probably don't need this), 

you most likely will not go broke over this! 

The other part to this, is that the gumballs become currency in our house. 

You want some time on the iPad? Sure! 

1 gumball = 5 minutes

Got a toy taken hostage from mommy because you didn't pick it up? 

See the original idea on pinterest

No biggie! Just pay the ransom money... 

1 gumball = 1 item 

It's really proving to be helpful for our oldest children, in particular. The 3 & 5 year old aren't really earning a lot of extra gumballs right now, but that's just because they haven't quite figured it out. However, they sure do understand that gumballs are MONEY at the end of the week, and they are not happy to lose them! 

So, hopefully that's been helpful to some of you moms (& dads) trying to 

find ways to motiviate your little ones! 

Some days I just let the gumballs work for themselves. Then if I'm feeling really wonderful, 

like today, I might create extra gumball earning opportunities. 

When I took the first picture (above) this morning, our 5 year old had lost 

all but one gumball. 

I want him to have success, so I gave him lots of opportunities 

to do well and earn gumballs.

It works for us! We found what makes them want to do well: 

MONEY!

So, once you find what works... RUN WITH IT!

Every Once In A While I'm a Genius...

Once upon a time, I had lots of free time to think. Clearly this was when I only had a couple of little ones. In fact, once we had #3 free time was long gone.

When I use to have a spare moment, I would come up with brilliant ideas for decorating, organizing & things like that. Pinterest didn't exist. I was my own Pinterest. Well, now things are different. Now I don't have time for thinking. I barely have time for Pinterest. Especially since the baby is starting to nurse less during the day. I really only get to sit & nurse (therefore getting to think for 15 minutes) twice during the day anymore. He still nurses twice in the evening/bedtime hours & at night a couple times. We aren't planning on weaning anytime soon.

But this isn't a post about extended breastfeeding! Haha! I promise!

This is a celebratory post, today! This last week, I had a GENIUS IDEA! We have a real problem with mail at our house. There isn't a good "office" space in our downstairs, so our kitchen becomes the main hub where bills, calendars, keys, school, coupons, etc all reside.

Mail wasn't getting sorted. Bills were getting lost. As a result, they were not getting paid on time. Bad news...

One day, however, it hit me as I was making breakfast. "These oatmeal containers would fit envelopes really well." Wait... Mail comes in envelopes! BRILLIANT!

I went to my "trash collecting" area in the garage. I have every container we've ever purchased food in. There are egg cartons, yogurt cups, paper towel rolls, Happy Baby puffs containers, and much, much more. There are also approximately 20 oatmeal containers. I keep this stuff for crafts, and I'm so glad I did.

Here's the finished product. I hung them with 3m strips. It's still in need of labels & if I could do it again I would cover the outsides of the cans with some sort of paper. In fact, I might re-do it that way in the future. But for now, the piles of mail are under control, and I'm a happy momma. Not only did I have this marvelous idea, but I FINISHED IT! Now that's saying something.

Momma Mondays... road trip secrets revealed

Now that Friday Top Tens are off to a good start, I'll be starting a little thing called Momma Mondays.

My hopes are that every Monday I will share tips, tricks & secrets to the world of mommies! Things you never knew before... things you might not have wanted to know! :)

This week, I am revealing my road trip secrets!

If you follow me, you know we just took all five of our kids (ages 6 & under) on a 17 hour road trip to Florida last week. I was TERRIFIED! So, I went a little over the top, BUT IT WORKED!

*that's our jam-packed trunk... there was also a car top carrier. 

First of all, I strategically planned stops. We knew that with a 5 month old, we would be stopping every 2-3 hours to change a diaper or nurse. So, I went onto mapquest & found a good stopping point about every 2-3 hours.

I also got onto Google & found any fun kid-friendly stops (world's largest stuff, you know). We only did 2 of those, because the rest took us too far out of the way. We went to Metropolis, IL and saw all the fun Superman stuff. That was a BIG HIT! Also stopped in Georgia at the world's largest peanut! Haha! Little Miss 5 year old thought it was just great! :)

Once I knew how many stops we'd have (there were of course a few extra potty breaks taken :) ), I then made a goodie bag for each stop. In each medium sized gift bag (some of them are shoved in the trunk in the pic above) was a car-friendly craft, some sort of activity, a small toy for each child & in a couple bags there was a new movie for that 3 hour time slot. We have a DVD player in our van, but I refused to let our family road trip turn into nothing but movies & LeapPads.

Now, when I say I went over the top, this is what I mean... each bag had a theme. Yes, I'm serious. Haha! Theme #1 was superheroes, #2 was jungle animals, #3 was puppies, #4 was music, #5 was the beach (since we WERE going to Florida).

Crafts were easy... things like those wood shapes you can color, simple foam sticker kits, one was putting sticky jewels onto old CDs (really pretty)... stuff like that.

Activities were things like the license plate game (not a hit), coloring pages stapled together to make a book, sticker books, etc.

Toys had to be individual, cheap, & not annoying. Ha! Thank you Target Dollar Spot! I found animal finger puppets, animal masks, rockstar sunglasses, those foam ice cream cones that pop out with a string (hilarious) & bunches of other fun things. Some of them were even cheaper because they were dollar items that were on sale! I love Target!


So... I found these really fun road trip printables here that I used for each landmark/stopping point. I printed off the little cards & wrote in the locations. Then I pinned them on visors & stuff throughout the car. When we got to each location, I would pull off the card & the kids would cheer! Haha! I'd whip out another cute goodie bag & give them each a new snack.

It was definitely THE MOST fun I've ever had on a family road trip. I look forward to doing fun car games as they get older, but they are just not at good ages for that. This year was all about survival.

The key was to keep everything exciting & fresh! We don't allow the word "bored" at our house... or in our car. AND we had already told the big kids that they weren't allowed to ask "are we there yet" or "how close are we". Haha! I worked really hard to keep that car ride going smoothly! :)

NOW, I will admit...

I was so ready to be home, that on the way back we DID use LeapPads & DVDs more. But I'm cool with that! We had a great trip!


I have pinned a whole bunch of really great road trip on pinterest... you can follow me HERE!

Hope you all have a great week... more good stuff coming your way later in the week! :)