Bribing Children to Behave and Photography

I don't know if I have ever mentioned this before, but I hate clutter. I read books and then give them away, so I don't have to look at them. I throw away owners manuals, so they don't take up space in my drawers. I don't own very many DVD's and if renting video games wasn't so expensive I wouldn't have those lying around either. The digital camera that I currently own, and DJ uses as well for his photography classes, is a Fuji and I love it. I have had probably seven years or so. As you can imagine from what I just said, I threw the manual away and now I need it. Why? Because this school year, DJ is taking book two of the 4H photography lessons. The first chapter talks about aperture and how much light goes into the lens of the camera. Ugh, what? So I had to check to see if the camera was fancy enough to have these funny settings, but I couldn't figure out where to find them, even if they were there. So the other evening, while it was a cool 90 at eight in the evening, I took the camera out to play with it. I am not good at taking pictures of myself, matter of fact my pictures aren't good when someone else takes them either. I have no idea how my children got to be so photogenic but it definitely was not from me. As I played with the camera, I did find the setting to adjust the aperture. It does not go as high as really expensive cameras, but just by looking at myself why would I want it to? I look pasty enough with the setting it did go to, and I have a nice suntan, jeesh. So I figured out the first chapter, I am afraid to look at the second. Then DJ has to learn it. I probably should have just let him do it, he is much faster than me.

A blogging friend of mine had posted on her blog whether she could bribe her children not to fight over the summer. Just because my kids are homeschooled does not mean they don't fight, trust me they do. So I thought, hmm I wonder if that would work? So I tried it, and I am sad to say that yes it is working. They get a quarter for everyday they do not hit, provoke a fight, or scream at each other in hated rage, slam each others doors, and spew hateful words at each other. There have been days they lost their earnings, the urge to kill each other just couldn't be over come. There are not many days though. You would think I would be happy, but now I have to pay them at the end of summer, ugh! For my kids the urge to get money is bigger than the urge to kill each other.