It is such a nice little break from our day to day routine. Ben was away with the YM for 2 of the days for Winter Camp....brrrrr! The temp actually dropped to a crazy -40 the second night and so they only stayed the one night. But even the first night I think it dropped to about -30, but Ben said they were pretty warm in their quinzees! I am so glad there was no winter camp in YW. I would have hated it! I get cold at night camping in July. I would die camping outside in Feb!
So while Ben was away, I tried to fill our time with fun things to do. I took the girls to go see The Lego movie that they were dying to see. It was really cute and fun for even me to watch haha.
They wanted a pic with Olaf after:
And then I saw some friends had ordered this Groupon coupon for the Fun Dome, so I decided to as well. (Thank you Sheri if you're reading this!) It was fun for the kids too. I took them later in the day, and it was a fun way for them to burn off some energy in the -40 weather. There were 2 big bouncy castles (Chloe and Lily's favorite), a mini golf (Izzy's favorite) and then a warmer little room with ride on cars, a play kitchen, and some other toys (Olivia liked that part the best.)
We had fun watching movies at night with popcorn and treats, staying up late and sleeping in. Sat when Ben was home again, we got stuff done around the house that we needed, like we finally put up some shelves in the girls' bedrooms they have wanted.
The weekend was not all fun and games though. Lately I have found that my two oldest girls are just fighting so much! It is driving me crazy! I find that 9/10 fights in our house involve either one of them or both of them. The younger two rarely, if ever, fight. Isabelle and Lily used to be like that too. I hope this phase ends soon! I remind them that they need to try and work to get along, that one day they will be each other's best friends and so they need to treat each other better. I tell them that old phrase, "Don't fight WITH each other, fight FOR each other." Haha, I think it just annoys them more than anything. But I really do want to try and teach them to get along. They are going to have to get along with people who bug or annoy them for their entire lives, so now is the time to learn how to do it! I feel like Isabelle, because she's the oldest, often bosses Lily around, and Lily doesn't like it so she fights back. When I tell Izzy to try really hard not to boss her around, she does a good job, but then almost in retaliation or as a way to get back at her, Lily starts bossing Izzy around and the fighting starts again. Arggg! I am trying to be patient with it.
They are too old to just send to time out anymore. I saw once on the Super Nanny, a long time ago, the way she dealt with an older child who misbehaved was she had him go to his room and write out reasons why he shouldn't have done what he did. I thought that was pure genius, so I made them also write out reasons why they should not fight, and list reasons why they love the other. And you know what? After this, the fighting for the rest of the weekend was basically non existent! It actually worked! I LOVED reading their essays, so I took pictures of them:
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| I love it! This is Lily's. And FYI I don't "lock" her in her room at all, I just send her there and make her stay there. Also, she was looking forward to making a smoothie as part of her Faith in God goals, and she couldn't that night since she was fighting so much and got sent to her room instead, so that is what that part is all about. |
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| I love her captions at the top, "I'm hungry! Tummy is empty." I was making dinner while she wrote this. |
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| Izzy's note. The last line is funny to me, "It sometimes makes them want to say swears." I've never heard anyone in this house say swears during fights, so that is good! I'm glad she controls herself when she fights and doesn't swear LOL. |
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| Why she loves Lily, awww. So sweet. I love my children so much, I really want them to get along, and have peace in our home. I hope they keep up the kind behavior they have been showing to each other these last few days. |
