hauling hay and gathering eggs

this summer has been filled with many hot days hauling hay (by hand). blake usually hires a couple local boys and they bring friends and we spend 3 hours babysitting more or less. avery loves to get right in the middle of "the boys" and feels like he is 14 already. i have been explaining to him when he tells me that he isn't strong enough to lift a bale yet that unless he continues to try he will never get any stronger. this has made him totally obsessed with muscles. i told him that you have to work your muscles for them to grow. this has motivated him and it is the cutest thing in the world watching my boy struggle to push the bale over to his dad so that blake can throw it on the trailer. he is always saying that his muscles are "teeny" and that his dad has mountains for muscles (again, he is blake's biggest fan). we had a couple of people come out from vegas this week to load hay and avery watched as they counted out $500 to pay for their truckload. he was determined to get his hands on a little big of that money explaining to his dad that he deserved at least $100 for moving each bale out from the one beside it because his hands were little enough to fit in the crack and grandpa pulsipher's and dad's hands were too big. i was convinced, his dad not so much, but he did end up talking him out of $8 which he took and added to his jar of money which was a pint jar, but after adding the $8 bucks he now needed a quart jar to fit all of his money. i tried to show him how you could roll all the dollar bills together but anybody who knows him knows that he is a negotiator and ended up with the quart jar filled with almost $52 (he made me count it). this is all he made this summer gathering eggs and hauling hay, but his interest has been piqued and his dad has already explained to him that if he keeps up the hard work he will continue to become more valuable and his hourly rate will go up.

anna is a saver and hoards everything so we won't have to worry about her blowing all of her money at the book fair like avery did last year. she is pretty smart and has figured out that if it isn't worth my money, it usually isn't worth her money either. i am proud of her frugality and her realization that material things have no real value. she will complain about gathering the eggs that blake then takes to work and sells, but she loves to deposit the money into her bank account. avery has decided that he is never putting any money into the bank again because you can't withdrawal it whenever you want. last time we were at the credit union i let him withdrawal $5 and he wanted to empty it, i am going to have to watch that one.