Potty Training and The List

Little Miss Tyler Mae is in the process of potty training, and while I am super proud of her it has lead to even more laundry and scrubbing of bathrooms both of which I truly thought I did enough of already.  Austin is super cute though and goes with her all the time and sits next to her, it's nice being the big sister.

So let's talk about this list.

I have noticed a new trend in teenagers recently, one that I am hoping to not go along with when our girls are that age.  Here's a little back story.

We were down at the lake on Friday last week and while Adam and Joe were buttoning up the canvas on the boat and I was wiping down the outside I looked up as another boat pulled up into the boat prep lane.  It was a very nice boat, well into the six figure mark and included all of the fun stuff that a great boat like that should...wake boards, surf boards, tubes.  I looked at it smiled at the owner (a middle aged man) and Joe commented nice boat.  Here's where I have the issue.  It was quite obvious from the looks of it that the man we were speaking to was the owner of the boat, so it was shocking when I walked past it to throw away our garbage to notice that he was letting the air out of the tubes and working on cleaning the boat meanwhile there were THREE count them THREE teenagers in the car texting away on their phones.  And actually looking quite annoyed at the time it was taking for this man to get everything taken care of.  I just about stopped and asked if perhaps they had bought the fuel that day, or brought the sandwiches, maybe they were all disabled - blind or otherwise?  Because what would possibly be right and just in the world if you had fun all day on an AMAZING boat and didn't help with the prep.  Obviously there must have been something wrong with them, or the man lost a bet.  I managed to control myself and not turn into the crazy lady in the boat prep lane that day but since it happened now five days ago and I can't stop thinking about it, I decided there has to be an answer.  When I vented to Joe in the car someone mentioned well perhaps the man would rather do it himself so as to ensure that it is done properly rather than having the "kids" (these were every bit of 17 year olds) do it wrong.  Well that just spun me up even worse.  Which led me to "The List".  I am drafting a list of things that I would like the girls to learn before they become adults.  Things like driving a stick, riding a motorcycle, backing up a trailer, writing a resume.  What ever happened to teach them to fish and you no longer have to catch their dinner, now we can't even teach teenagers to deflate an inner-tube?  Maybe I am all wrong and maybe there is a whole other story that I completely missed from that boat full of people, but it lit a fire in me to make sure that I teach the girls what I can and the value of doing something correctly.