Lesson learned?!??

It all started yesterday when Brayden came home from school in tears. He said, "Mom, I broke my shoes." I thought, how in the world can you break your shoes? Sure enough, he had yanked and pulled on the strap (there were no ties, there were elastic straps over the top of the tennis shoe) and it broke apart. I was ticked! I could just see him sitting in circle, pulling and messing around with his shoe. These were shoes that we just pulled out of his closet. Grandma Wagener bought these great shoes for him last summer at the Nordstrom sale. I just looked at him and said, "That is so sad! What shoes are you going to wear all summer? I guess you will have to wear your sandals everyday now, even in the rain." He was in tears already and this didn't help a whole lot. I told him if we had time this week we could drive all the way downtown and see if Nordstrom could sew them back together. In the meantime you will have to wear the shoes that are too small. I also told him we would have to take some money out of his piggy bank to pay for the shoes to get fixed. He agreed right away and was so glad that this problem could possibly be solved!

I thought, this is a great lesson for him! He had just earned $2 at the yard sale for helping me, and for choosing some toys to sell. Now he would have to give it right back so he could have shoes to wear. Furthermore...... Kent and I just made last minute plans to go to Silver Mt. for a night this weekend. Check it out. http://www.silvermt.com/ We are all very excited and B keeps talking about our "vacation" and what he needs to pack and what we should eat and when we should leave. It's very cute to see how thrilled he is! He has a plan in his head for the water park and what to do with his sisters while we're there! Anyway...... last night we were talking about our vacation and he said, "I think we should stay there THREE nights!" I told him how that would be so fun, but I didn't have enough money saved and I had to work really hard just so we could go for one night.. yada yada yada.... he seemed to understand somewhat. Does anyone else have trouble teaching kids about the value of money??? We have really been trying to explain and show him about this concept but sometimes it seems so far out there, he'll NEVER get it!

Back to the original story....I thought this will be a good money/take care of your stuff lesson. I talked it up the whole way downtown. I kept saying, "I really hope they can fix your shoe so you will have tennis shoes to play at the park and ride your bike all Summer, I hope we have enough money to get it fixed!" (Knowing perfectly well that Nordstrom would fix it for free).

We got inside and I told the people there that the strap broke on his shoes. They were wonderful and said, we will send those in to get fixed and they should be back in a few days. Great! B heard this and as we were walking towards a sale rack he said, "MOM I WON'T HAVE SHOES TO WEAR ON VACATION!" I said, "Yeah, that's sad, I guess you'll have to wear your crocs. the whole time."

IDK if the sales guy heard all of this but two minutes later he walked over to where we were checking out the shoes sales rack (it's the half-yearly sale, who knew?) and he said to me, "Maam, (I hate being a maam) if you can find some shoes that are on the sale rack, why don't you just take those in replacement of the other ones?" WHAT???? I have to say Nordstrom has THE BEST customer service, but I couldn't believe it. I was torn (for 1/2 a second), do I carry through and prove my point/lesson for my son, or do I take the free $50 pair of shoes? Needless to say we walked out with these:

The brand new shoes: (After a trip to the park and a bike ride, they already look well-worn).

I couldn't believe we got a new pair, and B was somewhat confused. I didn't really explain what was going on and in the car he said, "Mom, wasn't that so nice of them to let me borrow these shoes while they sew my other ones?"

Lesson learned: Break your stuff and get brand new stuff! Seriously. Another day, another lesson failed....maybe tomorrow!