Workin' Hard for the Stickers

Eventually I'll get back to blogging about the rest of our trip, but until then I had to post about today. We went and did something fun of Sawyer's choosing as reward for this hard working man getting all his chores done for two weeks! Yep, this kid had to starting earning his keep around here.  On our last night in Couer d'Alene we went and visited with Bob and Jeannie DeLateur and their children who live in Spokane. Bob was the one who married us at our wedding and has been a good friend of Matt's for a long time, but I had only met he and his wife briefly that day six years ago so it was fun to finally get to know them. I can definitely see why Matt thinks so highly of that family! I learned so much from Jeannie on how she raises a family of four kids, a lot of which we implemented once we got back home. One of them was making a chore chart for Sawyer with jobs such as:

Putting his own dishes away

We moved some dishes around to make this twirling cabinet his very own where the small glass plates, his plastics plates, bowls, spoons and forks now live. 

Another job is:

Feeding the beast named Moxie every morning. 

His other chores consist of making his bed, taking a bath at night, picking up toys before bedtime, and taking his dishes to the sink after eating. After he completed each one he chose a Lightening McQueen sticker and placed it on his chore chart. They stickers didn't always end up in the right row for the completed job, but eventually all the spots were filled. He knew that once the chart was full of stickers he got to choose the reward and he chose going to the zoo! Nice pick!

We picked up Grandma to go with us and went this morning at 9 before it got too hot. 

Still was warm enough though to need to cool off in the elephant snout fountain! 

Ironic that you can go to the zoo to see the living creatures, but for a little 2 1/2 year old boy the highlights are all inanimate objects like the animal statues, 

the bridges to run across, 

and all things with wheels. 

Even in the amazing butterfly exhibit he was a thousand times more excited over the sound of a big loud truck nearby then he was about the hundreds of beautiful butterflies fluttering right in front of his face. Go figure! 

The day was a fun one celebrating his chore chart being completed and his potty training success. I really seems like giving him jobs has made him feel like he has more of a purpose in our house and has cut down drastically on the fit throwing and that right there is a HUGE victory, one definitely worth celebrating!

 And just because I found this in our photos and it blew my mind, check out this picture below from last year of Sawyer and Jett at the zoo. They were just babies!!