What it means to be a Burdine

A couple weeks ago I drove Ella to her first day of first grade all by ourselves. Thinking about how old she was getting, I wanted to take the time to talk to her about how with every year of school she will take on more responsibility. Ella is a very mature little girl so I knew she would understand what I was talking about. I told her that when she is in school and out with her friends she is representing our family and there are certain ways and rules that as a member of our family we (her parents) expect her to follow. So when she has to make a decision about how to act or what the right thing to do is always ask herself "is this what a Burdine would do?" This conversation has really stuck with Ella over the past couple weeks and I commonly hear her say to Luke, "Luke, that is not how Burdines act!"
Tonight at dinner we thought we would have a little review of what it means to be a Burdine. Luke first chimed in with, "Burdines never hit!" Pretty good rule. We continued with a whole list of our family rules:
Ella- Burdines never lie
Mom- We obey the rules
Dad- We never scream at each other
Luke- We don't poke each other in the eye
Ella- We are respectful
Mom- We always love each other
Luke- We never fight
Ella- We never quit
Dad- We eat our dinner (pointing to their plates!)
Ella- " and the golden rule....we treat each other as we want to be treated"
Luke- "and our silver rule....we never stop fighting...he pauses and smiles after he realizes his mistake and says...we never stop fighting the bad guys I mean!" We all started laughing!!
I hope these rules stick with them!!