4 Scoops

Okay, everyone, I have gotten some questions regarding what 4 scoops means.  So I will explain now.  I meant to take a picture of my kids on Sunday for this one but my mom called and I was on the phone for the whole 4 scoops experience.  When we first moved to St. Johns, the bishopric came over to visit us.  The 1st councilor, Brother Waite, told us this story.  

There was a general authority who came to a ward to visit and noticed a father on the stand looking at his misbehaving children and then held up 3 fingers.  The children got very still in their seats for a while when they saw the 3 fingers.  But pretty soon it wore off and the kids started acting up again so the father held up 2 fingers and again the kids straightened up and behaved for a while.  Then the kids got restless again and the father held up 1 finger so the kids all sat on their hands and were perfectly quiet the rest of the meeting.  After the meeting was over the general authority went to the man and said I have 3 questions for you:  1) What does 3 fingers stand for?  2) What does 2 fingers stand for? and 3) What does 1 finger stand for?  The man answered that on Sunday nights they had ice cream at their house and each child started Sunday with 4 scoops.  Each time they misbehave during Sacrament Meeting a scoop is taken away with a simple hand motion.  In all the years they had been doing this, he had never gotten below a 1!! 

Our kids thought this sounded like a great idea so we agreed to try and our goal is to be the "4 scoop family."  The first week ended in Brady tears because he got all the way down to 2 scoops since he was talking to his cousin Joey.  Joey didn't care if Brady got ice cream because Joey had had ice cream the night before.  Brady began crying and Joey moved to the row with Grandma.  Brady learned that we were serious about how many scoops he got and has made wonderful improvements.  We had our primary program this week and Brady worked so hard to ignore the little boy next to him that kept trying to talk to him.  Brent and I had great fun watching this from below.  Hopefully this ice cream habit doesn't break the bank account or make our pants too much tighter.  It is definitely lots of fun!!