a little hard work never hurt anybody...

I don't know if your kids ever fight with eachother :) but mine do. Sometimes we're at our wits end trying to get our kids (E & P) to appreciate and respect eachother and stop being so self-focused all the time. Sunday morning before church another fight broke out, seriously ruins the whole "let's go worship God as one happy family". So that afternoon as a consequence Jon put them to work. Quite a bit of yard work and scrubbing some tarp thing he has. Later he stated to them "yesterday was the last day your mother will do your laundry" (not sure if this has been thought through, but sounds nice to me).

They actually worked hard and worked together. It was suprising at how much they accomplished. They even sorted, folded and put away their own laundry. I think we're on to something... By the way, that day(yesterday) I think was the very last day of warm weather...I have been freezing all day and mourning the end of flip-flops...