Last night, Rylee brought me her favorite pair of glasses with a slight issue.



At first I thought it was just a screw missing. No need to panic, we can adjust the screw. Upon further examination, I found a very different situation.



If you look careful at the lens, there is super glue on it. Apparently in February, the screw on her glasses came loose. She was afraid she was going to get in trouble for breaking her glasses so she didn't tell us. Addyson helped her "fix" her glasses by gluing them back together. (Amazingly enough, the screw is actually still there, just super glued in place.) They had to come clean with the story after the gluing came apart and her second pair of glasses turned up with a missing lens. How can a kid break two pair of glasses in one day??????

Let's just say I didn't win the "Mom of the Year" award last night. I definitely chose to be upset about the situation. I really wasn't mad about the glasses being broken. I understand that screws loosen and things happen. What I was upset about was the lies. I was upset that the girls had made a mistake and tried to cover it up for 2 months.

After a thorough searching of her bedroom, we found the missing lens of the back up pair. A quick trip to Dollar General for replacement screws (boy am I glad they had them. I really didn't want to go to Wal-Mart after the long day I'd had) she had a pair of glasses to wear to school today.

During the heat of the moment, I grounded both Rylee and Addyson for a week. No TV, no computer, no friends for a week. I don't know that our girls have ever really been grounded at all. A WEEK'S A LONG TIME!!!

All night last night I was feeling terrible about losing my patience, raising my voice, and making my girls cry. They cried themselves to sleep, but so did I.

Marty and I decided that we would make a list of chores that girls could do to work off the punishment and not have to be grounded. We gave the girls the option to either keep their grounding or work it off. We didn't give them the list until after they agreed to the terms. They both agreed to work of the grounding.

So the list:

Rylee:
Clean the family room (dust, vacuum, wipe down leather sofas, etc)
Clean her bathroom
Clean half the baseboards in the house

Addyson:
Clean the kitchen (clean out refrigerator, wipe cabinet doors, etc
Clean the second bathroom
Clean half the baseboards

As soon as their chores are done, the grounding will be done. We figured there was an hour or two of work that they could do either Friday night or Saturday morning.

You would have thought that we had beat the Rylee. She was crying harder tonight doing chores than she did last night. Jessica wanted her to come outside and play but she can't until her chores are done. As Rylee was dusting and sobbing, Jessica came to me and asked if she could help with the tasks so that they would be done sooner and they could all go out and play.

I promptly agreed.


Jessica did as much or more work than Rylee in the end.

How often in our lives do we make mistakes, have great sorrow for what we've done and feel like the burden is too great to bare. Do we allow the Savior to ease our burden? The Savior already paid the price for us. He's already done the chores for us. We need to allow him to ease our pain.

At the end of the night, I have a really clean house, and three happy girls playing outside with their friends.