Family Care Center

Last week, Carli asked me what we were having for dinner and immediately told me she didn't like and went about pouting.  Because you know, I NEVER cook anything she likes, EVER.  She had a mini-melt down in the pantry when I told her no to her request to make her own dinner of a cheese sandwich and she stomped off to the play room.  Five minutes later she comes back with a note: Dere Mom, I am disappointed in you but I still love you.  And later on, I got a note that said she was mad at me.  So that night after she went to bed I wrote her a note and told her it was okay to be mad but it was not okay to say you didn't like something if you had never tried it and it was not okay to say hurtful things to other people just b/c you didn't get what you wanted.

And thus was born the idea of "Family Care Center" from Carli.  She wanted to make mailboxes for the whole family so we could write eachother notes.  I thought it was a pretty good idea b/c it would at least get her to talk or write about her feelings instead of simply sulking.  So while the girls were off having sleepovers a couple of weekends ago, Keith, Drew and I had our own little date and set about finding something that would work for our mailboxes. 

We ended up with four wire baskets and four notebooks.  After church Sunday night we worked on getting the whole system set up.  First, we had to add our names to our mailboxes.  Drew was a good sport and cheered everyone on with their decorating!

Aren't we so artistic?!

 

Well, Carli didn't think Keith had enough décor on his mailbox so she spruced it up a bit.  :)

 

 

Drew got a little extra loving in between the decorating!

 

And then it was time to "install" the mailboxes.  Carli was very much into the whole process.  She helped Keith hang each box and then very carefully placed each persons notebook in their mailbox.

We've had our "mailboxes" for a couple of weeks and the girls LOVE them.  It is fun to write a note to them at night and see them excitedly go see if they have "mail."  They enjoy writing/drawing notes to eachother and Keith and I.  I really like the notebook idea b/c the notes will be saved for them to look through later.  Grammy even wrote them a note when she came over last week.  :)