This Mother’s Day post is sponsored by Savings.com
Saying yes to kids can be such a difficult thing. Especially when you’re tired or overwhelmed and they want to do all the things that seemingly take too much energy. I’ve spent the past 6 months tired, overwhelmed or both. My poor children. Mama never wants to do anything!
Well, this weekend, after 3 weeks of someone in our family being sick, I decided that I’d take on a challenge. It’s the #YesMomDay Challenge. My goal was to say yes to everything I could for a day. (Thankfully, I’m feeling a lot more energetic now that I’m no longer pregnant, I just have to work around a very needy baby).
I was worried though. I have 7 children. What if they all want to do something off the wall and I just can’t handle it? I can’t possibly fulfill all of their desires.
There’s good news for me! We’ve trained our children not to expect any pricey items or extravagant trips. We do take them places (they’re not completely sheltered) and the teens now ask to do a lot more than they used to, but overall, they’re not begging for money or extravagant gifts. Time together is plenty for most of us, most of the time! After being sick for so long, nobody was asking to do anything. The answer was always no…not until your sisters are feeling better.
So, what did we do?
Since we’d been sick, my kids really never expected to go anywhere fun, BUT I could tell we all needed to get out. It was a nice day and I knew the sunshine would do us some good, so we decided to make the 1.5 hour trip to the zoo. Everyone was soooo excited! I was able to say YES before they even thought of asking for it. My 2 year old had never been to a big zoo, so he was super excited to get to see the elephants and giraffes! Everyone kept commenting that it felt like we were on vacation. The lightheartedness in the air, was delightful.
We had brought fruit snacks, crackers and drinks to keep the kids going while we were inside. Sometimes, with this many people in a family, it can be hard to ration the snacks. Some little ones would eat it all if you let them! This time though, these same children would ask for more of something and I’d say “yes”, just to see how it went. Amazingly, nobody was upset about not getting something and everyone was happy with their snack rations. I do think, however, that the 2 year old may have had the most fruit snacks of the day. The great thing is, nobody cared (or were negatively affected by a sugar rush or anything either, lol)!
After a while of walking around the zoo, my 8 year old says, “Mom, can I get a new pair of shoes today? My toes are really hurting me, these must be too small!”. My brain was thinking, “I bet we have a pair that will fit you in the basement at home”. But, instead, I said “yes”. Even though it about killed me. 🙂 I did give myself an out though. “As long as we can find you an affordable pair.” So…after our trip to the zoo, we headed over to Kohl’s to see if they had any sales. We found several pair of tennis shoes on sale for half price. We had picked one of our favorites and grabbed the first size 3 that we could find. When we opened the box, we noticed that we had found a box that didn’t match any of the display models. My daughter and I really liked the color and style of the shoes though and wanted to buy them if the price was right. She tried them on and they fit well, so we decided to verify the price of the shoes.
I found the shoe clerk and asked him how much the shoes were. He scanned the box and said they were $3.99! Um. OK! I had planned to pay $19.99, but I’ll take $3.99. Apparently, this particular pair of shoes had been discontinued and put on clearance and there was only one box left on the shelf. It must’ve been missed and we just happened to find it! Now that was a FUN thing to say yes to. I’ve always been proud of a great bargain!
While we were in Kohl’s, we were all getting hungry. It just so happened that we were in a part of town where my older children get to stop and eat at Baja Jack’s when they travel to visit a Children’s Home our church sponsors. They love that restaurant and always want to go there when we’re in town, but we’ve never been able to take them.
This YES was pretty cool.
My oldest son asks, “Can we eat at Baja Jack’s?” and normally, I would say no to this question. There’s so many of us, it can get expensive to eat out for anything other than the dollar menus at fast food restaurants. Well, this time, when I was asked, I said, “Yes!” and they all stopped and looked at me like I’d lost my mind. They said, “Are you serious?” And once again, I repeated “YES”. They all squealed with delight!
So, we enjoyed our plates of nachos at Baja Jacks and we were all exhausted. Pretty soon, my 5 year old says, “Can we go home?” I was delighted to hear those words, because I knew I could easily say YES to that! I hadn’t had so much activity in a several months. My muscles ached. It was a good ache though as we were all happy and had such a nice time.
Because of this day of focusing on yes, I aim to try to say yes to my children even more often. While, I won’t go to the extreme of spoiling or teaching them to expect things, I aim to make memories that will last a lifetime! I discovered that we’re all happier when there’s more yeses than there are no’s.
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