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Indiana, United States
Updates on our homeschooling family with ten children, a handful of chickens, a couple horses, three bunnies, and six cats. Visit our website at PeacefulHome.net

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Grocery Spending

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Oct 2010 - $231.39


Nov 2010 - $998.22


Dec 2010 - $340.29


Jan 2011 - $855.15


Feb 2011 - $203.17



Mar 2011 - $916.52



Monthly Average $590.79


Weekly Average $137.85
Our family's website, PeacefulHome.net, is in the process of changing hosting companies and is currently inactive. Our plan is to move this blog over once construction is complete. Please stay tuned for updates!

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

"Banana Slug"


Along the same lines of last week's Tuesday Tip, here is something else we do when heading out in public with our precious children. Several years realized that we needed to be able to round up our children quickly.

We voted on a code word, something that was rather unique so whenever they heard it, they would know to come to the parent immediately and pay attention. The winning word(s) was "Banana Slug," mascot of UC Santa Cruz. Just one more glimpse into the oddities of the Stumpfs, but it's not something that normally comes up in conversation.

For a couple weeks we practiced at home. Bryan even got a stopwatch. He'd yell "Banana Slug," and the children would run from all over the house and line up in age order in front of him. If they made it under 15 seconds, we'd pass out M&Ms (my favorite training tool). I think the record was around 7 seconds.

Pretty soon we were able to try out this new skill in public. It is especially helpful when rounding the troops up after church, calling everyone together to make an announcement, or lining them up to pay at the Chinese Buffet. The funniest thing is how quickly the children's friends caught on. Now we will often have "honorary Stumpfs" in our line!

1 comment:

  1. This is great!!! My son has Autism and at times I have to yell out to stop him and at first just yelling "stop!" would work, but that has worn off and I think he would respond to a code word.. especially if I make it fun like banana slug!

    Thanks! Your tips are fabulous!

    Becki@BlogMommas

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