Butterfly World!

The early start to our summer (because of the teachers strike) has taken a toll on my children's relationship. I have been pretty fed up with the arguing, screaming and disobeying. So something drastic had to be done! We were given the book "How to have a new kid by Friday," by Kevin Lehman, way back when Danika was young and we thought the principles would apply now. So Steve and I spent evenings reading it (it took much too long and we need to re-read once again) But basically the philosophy that we understood was that you say things once, and if they are not obeyed then something gets taken away such as a play date. So you don't get B until A is completed. Anyways, we started it and I felt like I was always mad at the girls and they were always in trouble. A friend asked what I was doing to reward the good behavior and I must have missed that in the book, because we weren't doing anything. 

All that to say, we started a reward star chart. The girls can pick something fun they want to do, or buy and they have to earn stars toward it. 

The girls chose butterfly world in Victoria for their first one, and conveniently it was on groupon. They had to earn 20 stars and they went to work right away! They were happily cleaning rooms, sorting laundry, Danika was cooking eggs for breakfast, unloading the dishwasher and helping so much with Amara. 

So after about 2 weeks of working, we took them on Sunday. It was very fun! Danika was a bit disappointed because a butterfly landed on everybody else but her! Even her baby sister! But we spent about 2 hours in the tropical room, finding all the species of butterfly's on the map. Having the birds land on our arms, checking out the geckos, fish, flamingos, caterpillars, turtles and one of the birds laid a few eggs we got to see. Steve had some fun with his camera and snapped some awesome photos. 

World's largest moth

The place was perfect for Amara, she walked around the place pointing things out excitedly, going up to people saying hi! It was perfect! 

At the end we walked across the street to a really cool park and played for another hour with the girls and had a picnic dinner. It was so fun watching Steve run around with the girls squealing with delight. 

I love my family.