It\u2019s summer time! \u00a0It\u2019s time for sipping lemonade in the shade of a live oak before lunch, lounging on a pool float during the hottest part of the day, and leisurely walking at the nearby state park in the cooler evening hours. \u00a0We do some of that every summer. \u00a0But, summer time on the franch is also a time our children can earn more spending money doing extra chores with their extra time. \u00a0How much more is up to them. \u00a0There\u2019s a percentage of what they earn that goes to savings for college and another to give on Sunday mornings. \u00a0But, how to spend the rest is always theirs to decide. \u00a0So, they carefully write start and end times, rounded to the nearest minute, on self-made time sheets. \u00a0It\u2019s sweet to see our kindergartener proudly write in her best handwriting, 10:08 \u2013 10:23, for her time in the garden picking ripe cherry tomatoes. \u00a0Early in the summer this year our son lacked any real motivation to do extra chores until a trip to a pet store with my husband and a conversation with a clerk in love with bearded dragons. \u00a0He came home to tell me he was going to have a bearded dragon by the end of the summer. \u00a0An hour later, he dusted off his overalls and work gloves and asked for a list of chores. \u00a0Thank you, pet store clerk. \u00a0That\u2019s sarcastic, by the way. \u00a0I mean, I\u2019m certainly glad he\u2019s motivated\u2026but, even if this lizard is completely his responsibility, I really don\u2019t want to think at all about yet another creature on our franch, and in the case of a lizard, in our home. \u00a0I know a good mother wouldn’t say to her young son, \u201cHow \u2018bout saving for a toy? \u00a0Or a video game? \u00a0That way, you can throw it away when you\u2019re done?\u201d \u00a0Okay, I know – it wasn\u2019t my finest moment. \u00a0And he’s only following in my footsteps, as I look at all the animals I’ve brought home to the franch. \u00a0When my son calculated the final cost to be nearly $300 for all the supplies and the bearded dragon itself, I did breathe a sigh of relief. \u00a0I figured by the time he earns that much, he\u2019ll hopefully be on to some other thing – something that doesn\u2019t breathe. \u00a0But, he\u2019s really excited about this bearded dragon and getting closer to his goal every day and it isn\u2019t yet mid-summer. \u00a0He has read four books from the library on lizards already. \u00a0He even came up with\u00a0new ways to earn enough money like making my bed every day for a couple more bucks a week. \u00a0Well, I guess all I can do is leave\u00a0some\u00a0Lego catalogs open on the kitchen counter knowing Legos are his only Achilles’ heel in this situation\u2026and start making my own bed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s summer time! \u00a0It\u2019s time for sipping lemonade in the shade of a live oak before lunch, lounging on a pool float during the hottest part of the day, and leisurely walking at the nearby state park in the cooler evening hours. \u00a0We do some of that every summer. \u00a0But, summer time on the franch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1052"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1070,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions\/1070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}