Incentives are a wonderful thing :)

Having 9 children has brought about a lot of various struggles especially since 5 of them haven't lived with you longer than 10 days. So here we are trying to learn how/what would be best to help our children become more Christlike toward us and each other. We have two incentives going on presently. One incentive is to have spending money at our trip to Holiday World on Saturday and the other (which starts tomorrow) is working toward having their own MP3 player with the earliest one can acquire it being August 17. This of course doesn't work with the littler ones but the older 6 are excited about having their own (Christian) tunes.

Points are to be awarded under three categories: attitude (toward each other and us), servanthood (toward each other and us), and obedience. A maximum of 3 points can be given or taken away. Another category that points can be deducted from will be school. If I receive a bad note from school for any of the three older new additions or if I have to get on to my 3 bio constantly about starting their school work then a point will be deducted. We believe this will help them learn that they have to work hard for something they really want and also instill in them better behaviors than we have seen at certain times over the past weeks.

I sit here amazed right now on how clean the lower half of the house. I normally have to get up so much earlier to start cleaning prepping for childcare. I may actually get to sleep in a bit tomorrow. We will be assigning chores in the upcoming weeks but our lives seem to be just go, go, go that I haven't spent too much time thinking of a chore list.

My heart's prayer and desire is that our attitudes become/reflect that of Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus); That our home would be peaceful (Hebrews 12:14 Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.); that we wouldn't have complaining and arguing (Philippians 2:14 Do everything without complaining and arguing); and that anger wouldn't reign in our lives (James 1:19-20 My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.)

God never said His will was easy but He would give us the strength to make it through. We are still moving forward and loving my children more and more every day.


We are thinking the next incentive may be to earn Christmas money to spend on other people. (any future ideas would be helpful :D )