Teaching children to work

Don took this picture. I didn't take as many pictures as I wanted because I was busy working. But we all know that the GIRLS work the hardest. :) Here we are planting corn. Rachel and Mayah LOVED putting the corn into the holes and putting dirt on top of it and stomping it down. We planted Kandy Corn and can't wait to eat it. It should be ready end of Aug.

Here is Zach. He is a good worker too. Here he is digging the new holes for the posts. We have to put up a fence to keep the deer, rabbits, and other things out. But Zach is funny. You will find him working hard..... Or being goofy and doing this. He was playing in the mud. Then he would pick up some rocks and work a bit and then leave. We also found him....

doing this....Now does this look like someone who is trying to pick up rocks? It looks to me like he is trying to body surf on the dirt. Funny kid. He makes everyone laugh with his funny jokes and crazy behavior. He is going to be the life of the party. He makes friends easily and he is very fun to be around.

Caleb loves driving the riding lawn mower. Anytime he can use that he is more than willing to work. So we needed someone to take out the posts from the other area of the garden and bring them to the new area. He was excited about it and had a 'plan'. Don and I have both learned that EVERYTIME Caleb has had a plan it worked. So we let him do his own thing. He thinks ALOT and everytime he has been able to do just what he had planned. He went up and wiggled the posts until they came a bit lose and then he pulled them out. Then he hooked a rope the the mower and had an old sleeping back underneath the posts. He told me it would drag easier. Then he tied the rope around the posts and he easily brought all the posts to us. He had the biggest smile on his face. Now this is one smart cookie. He is going to make us rich one day. He is going to invent something and it is going to WORK.

I think it is so important to teach children the value of hard work. My parents were awesome at this. They taught us to work hard and we all did. They didn't care if we didn't like it. We had to work and we had to work hard. I feel that was one of the things my parents thought was very important. I also think it is important. I am working on teaching my kids to work hard. It isn't an easy task to get five kids to do something. It is even harder to have them doing it with a smile. Most of the time they complain and think they have to do "everything". But that is exactly what I thought as a kid. I wondered why I had to do everything. :)

So on Saturday we all went outside to move our garden to another area. We moved it closer to the house. I will spare you the long story but finally after Don got the tiller up and running he tilled a new area and we picked up rock after rock after rock. Have I ever told you we have alot of rocks in this area? We filled up two small trailer loads and that was only 1/3 of the garden. Our kids worked pretty hard getting those rocks out of there. They also ran through the sprinklers and ran and played and came back again. It was pretty cool. It was funny to see the kids run whenever Don or I complimented on how hard someone was working.