Names and a funny story

Mike and I really thought about the names we chose for our children. Most of the time, the list of names we had picked out got thrown away when we were at the hospital and we named them based on what we felt when we looked at them. I, personally, love every one of my children's names. Lately the kids have been into googling things like name meanings. When they looked this up, we had nice name meanings like: manly, courageous, my own meadow, pure, divine, from the valley. Then there was the one that was: son of brown. hmmm, made me laugh. I still love that name and, even more, I love the person that goes with it.

On to the funny story:
We have been trying to teach the kids about money. We set up an "allowance" (not really allowance because they get paid for their extra jobs but it is the same every week), made special banks for them to separate their money into (I will post a picture of them one of these days because they work really great), and have been talking with them about what they need to spend money on and what they need to save for etc. Bronson, recently had some money that he wanted to spend. He asked to go to the store and when we were there he picked out a little toy that he really liked. He spent most of the money he had to spend on it. A few weeks later, he came home with a book order. In it was a book that he just had to have. I was buying a few books, like I usually do, but because we are trying to teach them about money, decided that he would need to buy the book himself if he wanted it. Well, because he had bought the toy at the store, he didn't have enough money to buy the book. I told him that he would have to save his money and that the book would probably be in another book order. He was completely devastated. I am sure he cried the entire way to school. When he handed in his order form (with the books I was purchasing on it) he told his teacher how much he wanted that book. In his class, when they completely fill their reading logs, they earn a book. He looked over at the book basket and asked his teacher where she got the books for it. She said that when parents ordered books from the book order, she earned points and that she often used her points to buy the books for the book basket. He then asked her how she picked what books she ordered. She responded that if a student was interested in a book, they could write down the name and give it to her and she would consider it. Later, a note turned up on her desk with the name of a book on it....it was from Bronson. Over the next couple weeks, he proceeded to fill up his reading log (he was very diligent about it and very determined to get it filled). She asked him if he would like to look through the book basket....he wasn't sure, and asked if the book orders had come in yet. She said that they had not. He decided to look through the basket and he found one he thought he might like but continued to ask when the book order would be here and if his teacher thought he should wait to pick out a book. He asked her every day when it would arrive (remember that he did not know for sure that she had purchased it) and she finally told him it would probably be there Thursday or Friday. Wednesday he asked again before he left and, of course, it wasn't there. First thing Thursday morning he asked if it had arrived, it hadn't. Thursday was a half day of school because of parent teacher conferences. When he got ready to leave, he said to his teacher "If the books get here after school, could you bring them to my house?" She said she didn't think she could do that. When I got to my conference, there his sweet teacher was with his book (which had arrived after lunch). We had a good discussion about Bronson and his performance at school...he is very much a social-light and is very political about his dealings within the classroom. But she said that it was his smile that got her every time and he just had that way of getting what he wanted. I told her to keep the book for him to find the next morning when he got to school. He came home a VERY happy boy. And I found that it is a lot harder to teach kids the things you want them to know when they have very sweet teachers who are much nicer than mom and buy them the books they always wanted.