One more week of school for the older two.  JB finished preschool yesterday and has a class party at the park today.  

We have had beautiful weather this week.  Almost perfect!  With the exception of therapies, I am trying to leave the car parked at home and bike wherever we can!  We are close enough to the library, park, grocery stores, fun treats like ice cream, movie rentals, etc.  The boys are all fast enough that it does not take forever to get somewhere.

This afternoon B has a lawn mowing job.  It is just a one time job (family on vacation) and they have an acre.  We went over there recently to check it all out.  B was excited to see the riding lawn mower.  Every time he got on it though, it would die.  We figured out it has a safety feature and he is not heavy enough to keep the motor running.  Hopefully we can put some weights on the seat and get it to work for him.  If not, I will ride and he will walk with the small mower and go around trees, fence line, etc.  Will be interesting to see how I do since cut grass sends me sneezing.  Hopefully between allergy meds and a mask, I will be fine.

The boys and I have come up with a job list, along with standard chores.  I have decided instead of budgeting money for extra-curricular activities, I would ear mark that money for jobs around the house.  This way the boys can earn money for their activities and start getting an appreciation of the value of things.  I know one of the boys has already decided he does not really want to do an $80 week long summer basketball camp.  I have told them that we can split the cost of activities 50/50 for now but hopefully by the spring, they will have banked enough money to start paying close to 100%.  Little JB today earned $2 by cleaning out under the couch and couch cushions.  He is learning about mom's standard of clean, compared to his standard.  Some of the chores seem to pay pretty good, but I have to provide them with the opportunity to earn some 'decent' money.  We will see how it goes over the summer.

Another thing I have implemented recently is our 'get-along' shirt.  I have seen this periodically online and decided it was worth a try.   It is a 2xl t-shirt.  When the boys are arguing and fighting, they both have to put the shirt on for 15 minutes (both heads out the head hole - keeps them real close).  Then while they are 'together', they have to talk out what happened, apologize, etc.  When I first showed it to them, they thought it was cool and started to pretend argue so they could put it on.  However, when it came out for real, they were not happy about it.  In fact, they spent 5 minutes trying to drag the other around and I extended their time.  They soon got the hang of it and it proved pretty successful.

The other day the older two boys were being rude and I gave them some sentences to write (both of them have terrible penmanship so we are serving a dual purpose).  JB got sad and asked where his sentences were.  I wrote him out the sentence 'I will obey' and gave it to him with no instructions other than to write it 3 times.  I was curious, with his motor planning issues, how it would go.  He took the paper, went and sat at his desk and came out a few minutes later with the finished product.

I took the paper to his occupational therapist.  She was quite impressed that he stayed within the lines.  He has not worked on lower case letters, so he did pretty good, not having a 'correct' model.  I obviously did not tell him not to write '3 times' but he wrote it anyways.  We are not sure what happened with the '3 times', if he wrote '3 times' backwards or what.  However, he was consistent in what he wrote each time.  I think I need to make sentences a regular part of his day, great practice for him.

Here is a family portrait that he recently drew.

Other than the lawn mowing, a graduation party and a birthday party, a pretty low key weekend.  Currently have nothing scheduled for Saturday, maybe the boys will sleep in!