Competition is good for the SOUL....literally...

We got a Wii back in December. It's a lot of fun, and even the big savages like it. (us)
There are very few games, however, that fit our family standards of what we are willing to use our free time on and what we are willing to buy that doesn't have negative elements in it, or time-wasting games.
We borrowed Wii Sports Resort from a friend and liked it.   However, since we don't parent by giving our children anything they desire (they have to work to earn money for all their "wants" ), I was brainstorming a different twist on "earning." 

I had been wanting to memorize more Scripture.  I have recently been addicted to the book of Philippians...especially chapter 2 that talks about doing everything without complaining....remember...the passage that God worked and worked on me about all of 2009?   Despite having been a Bible Quizzer in high school and memorizing a chapter every month, lets face it....trying to memorize ANYTHING with 7 children about is daunting.  

So God gave me this idea to challenge my 4 oldest children to a competition.  I told them that if the average of how many verses they memorized was more than how many verses I memorized, then I would buy them Wii Sports Resort.    I threw in an extra perk.  If anyone memorized the WHOLE BOOK of Philippians, I would buy them their very own extra Wii Motion Sensor. ($20 value)    Sports Resort comes with 1 already, but you really need at least 2 to play against each other.

The competition started 2 1/2 months ago.  We had chapters of Philippians taped all over the place.
My bathroom mirror (that helped the most), their bathroom wall, and on many tables.
The deadline was May 1st.

Aslan memorized the entire book, messing up on only about 10 words total out of 104 verses.
Noah and Hosanna got around 30-35 or so...Josiah...5 and Me...drumroll......31 verses.

Now, despite the fact that I lost....their average was 41 verses to my 31.....rats, I could have squeezed in 11 more somehow.....I am really proud of how many I DID memorize.    It's harder with age ya know...and add lots of little kids who never stop talking, well, it's downright amazing that I even did one.  They say that with each pregnancy and with nursing your brain shrinks slightly....I've been doing one or both of those continually since 1995...so I think it may just be the size of a peach pit...but I digress.
Overall, it was a great experience.....except I'm out about $60.

Oh...you're wondering what I would have gotten if I had won...well, I would have saved $60 and they would have had to buy me a pint of Ben & Jerry's Phish Food ice cream.   sigh.   I'll just imagine how good it would have been...that's my fav. 

So....the take home message....bribe your kids....it's good for their souls and yours!!
(but it sure would have been nice to dig my spoon into one of these...)