Rich Man, Poor Man

I know that we've mentioned in the past that early on in our marriage we thought that if we raised our children the same they'd turn out basically the same. This hypothesis has been repeatedly proven wrong. My latest proof of this occurred this week. The boys' school has finally subscribed to an online lunch account recharge and low balance notification system. I got on there on Mon. to see how much lunch $ they had left for the remainder of the year. I figured out that in order for me to NOT have to pay the school any more money they would each have to have cold lunch three times sometime during these last 3 weeks of school. I explained the situation to the boys. Right away Isaac checked out the lunch menu and discovered that for the last week of school the lunches would be "manager's choice". To him this means all sorts of wonderful things like pizza, cookies, ice cream bars, etc. To me this means whatever is left over in the freezer that they need to get rid of. So in anticipation of the coveted Manager's Choice lunches Isaac made and brought his lunch to school for the next three days. Planning ahead and even sacrificing hot lunch on a chicken fingers day (one of his favorites) so he could be prepared for the "bigger reward". Elias on the other hand is equally excited about Manager's Choice but has not made any efforts to have his 3 cold lunch days. So I expect that when the last week of school comes he'll be brown bagging it. This isn't the first time we've noticed this difference in the two boys. Caleb and I have always said that we'd pay half for any purchase the boys wanted to make as long as we thought it was worth while (eg. Good - bike, scooter, football, book - Bad - video games, trendy toys we know they'll forget in a day, etc.). It's interesting to us the Elias who's had 2.5 years more earning time than Isaac has about $200 less in his bank account than him. Elias spends much of his time searching for things that we think would be worthy to blow his money on while Isaac can be reasoned with. When we tell him he probably wouldn't like it in a week or if he waited for his B-day or Christmas he'd probably get it anyway than he'll change his mind or just wait.

Oh my!!! As I'm sitting here writing this I'm witnessing another example. Elias has a field trip today so he HAS to bring a cold lunch. He is currently trying to bribe Isaac into making him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Right now he's offering 50 cents and Isaac is bargaining for more. HILARIOUS!! So, if any of you out there know of a way to be successful in life while always taking the easy way out and blowing your money all the time please let us know so we can adapt our parenting style to help out one of our children!!