the lemonade stand

The lemonade stand has been an idea of Luke's for a long time. I'm not sure if he first heard about doing one on Curious George or read about it in a book, but in any case, he has been asking to have one, playing lemonade stand in the bathtub, and wondering how much you can get by with charging for a glass of lemonade for the majority of the summer. I told him we'd do it before the summer was over, so I had to get in gear. Little did I know that our local bank was sponsoring lemonade stands and would provide you with materials to do a stand....too bad I had already purchased all our stuff before I figured that out. Anyway--we came up with the idea to do it Grandma Karma and Papa Joel's shop since we figured we would get a bit more traffic there than at our own house and the kids came up with ideas of what they wanted to sell and were sure to mention that they would need stripey straws. 

 

They made the sign (it took all of my willpower to go against my perfectionist sign-making/handwriting tendencies not to coach them and to let them do it all by themselves) and it turns out they did just fine. 

We also talked about what we'd do with any money they made and decided that most of it should go toward our Compassion friends who we sponsor (check out the link on the sidebar to learn more about Compassion if you're interested) and they could each keep a small amount for their piggy banks, too. I mention this not because I think we're great parents for making them give part of their money away, but because it's a challenge to figure out how to encourage your kids have generous hearts...and let's face it...how to make OURSELVES have generous hearts. We have lots of stuff. We have far more than we need, yet it's so much easier to be selfish rather than selfless. When we were all done and Luke realized their grand total was $17 (basically a fortune in his mind), he was pretty excited about spending it on legos. I reminded him about what we'd decided and he cried, "but we worked really HARD for all that money!" and really--they had. And how many times do I think the same thing or decide that I really "need" something that in all reality is not a need at all? Adults might not be so ready to admit it, but it's the same selfish stuff, we just aren't always as willing to say it out loud.

It's something to think about for all of us and this is just part of the reason that I can't say enough good things about Compassion. While it may appear that we are helping some children who are less privileged than our own in terms of monetary wealth, in reality we are the ones who are being helped as we try and teach our kids about generosity and friendship. We are learning and trying and hoping to instill values in them and in turn we try to re-teach ourselves the same things. We're not doing it perfectly and there are times when we feel we're doing just the opposite. On lemonade stand day, there were a few moments of less-than-loving arguing over who got to pour the lemonade and who was in charge of the money jar, so we had to work out a few of those little squabbles, which I guess were teaching moments, as well.

All that being said, it was a good afternoon and it was fun to see the kids interact with their "customers", whether they were strangers or some of their favorite family members who just so happened to stop by. They did a good job of counting up the "order totals" and Luke kept tabs on their total profits as they sold nearly every cup. He also decided that if anyone came back for seconds, he would offer them a discount for 25 cent refills...it's obvious who our little business man is. :) We ran out of cookies, lemonade, and energy after about two hours, and just maybe all learned another lesson in generosity, so I'd say it was a successful day!