Chores and Talents

Like all of us, our kids have their great days and their not so great days. Trying to get them all doing their chores on a regular basis is an ongoing chore for me. They all do pitch in with feeding the dogs and cat; mopping; vacuuming; dusting; fixing their beds; taking out the garbage; emptying the dishwasher; taking the scraps out to the compost heap; gardening, etc. But some days are better than others. Some days they just don't seem to have any spare time but most days are pretty good...

Ali's latest and greatest is she makes coffee for Curt and I every morning. I am completely serious! She loves doing it and she is very, very good at it! Here are 2 videos demonstrating.







As we all know, making coffee for the parents isn't the most ordinary task for the average 4 year old. Well, here's another one of her talents... smelling corks. She has an amazing nose and we always give her the cork to smell. She has, in fact, been the one to detect a truly off and corked bottle. She's incredible and offers her talents anytime. Actually, whenever she hears a bottle being corked, she usually comes running. She also loves collecting corks - especially champagne corks. She picked up many that she found in restaurants, the street, etc while we were in Meribel, France. She has a collection. Again, she's not your average 4 year old!

Here she is demonstrating her skills (photo taken when she was only 3 1/2). She / we actually discovered this talent when she was just 3 years old in Feb 2009 while skiing in Zell am See. Most of you have probably heard the story so I won't go into it now...