Life Skills and 5-card Draw

They say summer days are lazy, but not for us. We seem to be pretty packed from morning til night. Part of that is swimming lessons for these first two weeks (which pretty much absorb our whole morning), but we are also really racheting up with chores and learning life skills this summer.

Each day, the boys have their daily chores (for which we've started a point system by which they can earn their allowance). On top of that, we have a chore focus for 6 days of the week. These are life skill sorts of things--laundry on Monday, meal planning, shopping and prep on Tuesday, weeding and yardwork, cleaning out the bonus room, bathroom and other chores. On top of that, we will have special projects, which will allow the boys to earn extra money in additon to their allowances--cleaning out closets, raking up leaves, etc.

But there's time for play too. We are planning a day trip to Fort Osage in July--we've checked out several books on Lewis and Clark at the library and are trying to read up on that. We watched Disney's Treasure Island that we checked out from the library as well. We'll make some time for playdates, maybe catch a matinee one of these afternoons and go to "Old McDonald's" for hot fudge sundaes.

Today, Zac wanted to learn a card game. Before the school year ended, he "bought" (with Briarwood "Bucks") a deck of cards (cut into the shape of a flip flop) and asked me how to play a card game.

Well, most of the card games I know (not many) need 4 competent players. We had 3...and that third one was a bit on the edge :) So I thought we'd try poker. Yeah, yeah, I know you're supposed to have 4, but the stakes weren't high: plastic pirate men. That's the only thing we could find in quantity to gamble with.

Now, I have only played poker a handful of times, so I am no expert. Fortunately, Zac pulled out his trusty "Dangerous Book for Boys" book, which had the rules for 5-card draw, plus nicely illustrated examples of all the card combos. Perfect. We put our initial pirates in the pot and went around the table. Unfortunately, the boys learned after one go-around that folding meant you lose, and I won the pot with a pair of aces. I briefly explained the concept of bluffing, and dealt again. I had to fold because I had nothing, but Seth won the next pot of pirates with three of a kind.

At that point we had to put away our game to fold laundry, but the guys got kinda hooked. As long as they play for pirates, I'm fine with it. I just better not find them gambling away their allowance at Argosy.