#mommied Monday: Pulling Weeds

In honor of Mother's Day coming up, I'm going to be sharing stories {possibly weekly} that makes ya wanna say, "BOOM! You just got Mommied!" because it is a super power Often we feel like we just got owned by our children in the small battles so we need some encouragement when we don't lose!

We have these awesome flowerbeds all around our house! The women who lived her for the 5 years before us was the sweetest, retired, green-thumb with an eye for the adorable. One of the biggest attractions was the curb appeal. I quickly apologized to all the neighbors we met and confessed that the gorgeous front lawn would quickly fade because "I had a lot of humans in our house to feed, water, and keep alive" so the plants wouldn't be a priority, sadly.

Sure enough, last summer, lots of plants were scorched and I chose to dig up 1/2 of the awesomeness to extend our front porch for more seating and hopefully lots more missional living. I hacked down trimmed things back appropriately as the kids have gotten a bit bigger but failed to purchase the vast amount of mulch we need to replenish the beds and keep more of the weeds at bay.

All that leads to the flourishing, weedy, front flower bed. Yeah, it's been oozing with grass and plants that weren't there when we moved here so I'm assuming they're not supposed to be. I announced to the kids they could go in the FRONT YARD and play one afternoon with their neighbor friends {always a win} but only after they each produced 5 bucket-fulls of weeks.

To sweeten the deal, I encouraged them to use their new gardening gloves each of them got in their unEaster Baskets along with their new buckets. THEN I added that they would be earning an entire QUARTER for their hard work {a nickle a bucket} and if they wanted to earn more nickles when they'd finished their 5-manditory ones, they could. Izzie knocked hers out and was knocking on neighbor-friends' doors in no time. Mags was a little more particular about which weeds she wanted to stuff into her bucket. And Jamin...Jamin loathes manual labor and suffered through 2 buckets until I started chopping away at things and told him he was allowed to stuff his bucket with my clippings {saving him the "pulling" part of the job}.

#boom #mommied Happy Monday All. Winning...one morning at a time.

I would LUUUUUUVE if you would share your #mommied stories with us on the as Jules is going facebook page or find me on Instagram to share awesome documentation of your #mommied moment! Don't forget to use the hashtag so we can all find it. Maybe by the time Mother's Day gets here we will all feel the true power God has given us as mommies to train up His lil blessings.