All summer long I have been promising the kids that they could do a lemonade stand to help earn spending money for our upcoming vacation to Utah. They have had other opportunities to earn money with the weekly jobs for higher chart but I have found that when work around here is optional it never gets done. They would much rather quickly do the jobs they HAVE to do and then run off to play with friends. Before I knew it, it was two days before our trip. I purchased the supplies that we would need. Brooke had me write the letters out for her sign then she traced and colored them along with some pictures of cookies and lemons to add as well. Jace wasn't too sure if he wanted to participate anymore. He wanted the money without having to do any of the work.
The day before our trip we had a lemonade stand. Note to self- never do that again. The day before you leave on vacation is reserved for being stressed out with getting all the laundry done, bags packed, house cleaned up, ect.
Since Brooke and Jace were not being the best coworkers, I decided to have them work in shifts. Brooke took the first shift, mid-day, with the hot sun beating down on her while Jace went swimming at his friends house. Unfortunately for her this wasn't a good time. Not only was it hot for her but nobody was out and about to notice the lemonade stand. We live on a quiet street. We ended up postponing it until later in the day when it had cooled down. Brooke and Jace tried working together but got into too many arguments so Jace took over for the last hour, manning it himself. Luckily for him lots of people stopped by so he raked in the dough. Poor Brooke. She worked so hard and earned less than five dollars. Jace did significantly less work and earned three times as much. Not fair. I may or may not have secretly snuck $10 into Brooke's jar so they ended up making the same amount. Shhhh ... Don't tell.
Why didn't I just have them split all of the money that both of them earned equally? Good question. I sabotaged myself on that one earlier in the day. Dang it!! Jace was supposed to be working with Brooke but he decided that he would rather go swimming at his friends house. Brooke politely told him that any money she earned she would still split with him. I forbade it. I said "no way". If he wanted to earn any money he was going to have to work for it and do a shift of his own later. So later came and as he was rolling in cash he was also rubbing in the fact that I had forbade them from sharing earlier on. All with an extremely mischievous grin on his face . Grrr. My lesson on "you reap what you sow" backfired. Oh well, they both had fun and they both earned money for our trip which was the point anyways.
