Last night I had to pull out the trash bag.  I did not need to replace the one in the kitchen trash can or even use it for trash, I had to use it to motivate the band of toy pirates residing with us (AKA our kids).  The kids have a growing list of responsibilities in our home…one of which includes the ‘cleaning’ of their play room.  I drew the line in the sand last night by giving them a choice…they could either complete the cleaning of their room or I could pick up what was left and deposit them into a trash bag.  Now I had no intentions of actually throwing the toys away, I simply wanted to put them in the garage  for a  short while.

Fast forward to this morning.  The kids work up and noticed how clean their play room was.  Bode began to look for his new favorite toy (baby hammer) and was unable to find it.  He noticed a large lawn and leaf trash bag and asked me where the toy was.  I pointed to the trash bag and that’s when I noticed I had four sets of ‘sad’ eyes looking at me.  They starred in complete disbelief.  It seemed that the motivation to clean finally arrived…albeit 12 hours later.  I decided to give them another shot and am currently enjoying listening to them put their toys away.  The real question is will they remember this enough to not repeat this mistake again?  Will they remember this short lesson on grace?

I love kids 🙂