Dreams Come True

For the last 6 months, Ethan has been working REALLY hard to make his Dream Big 2017 become a reality.  Although -- if we're being technical -- he's actually been working on US to make this dream come true for the past four years.  But since we've consistently told him no way are we buying you an iPhone, he decided at the beginning of the year to buckle down and earn the money to buy one for himself.  And he did it!

One of his whiteboards devoted to helping him plot out his plan.

His original goal was to save up enough money to get the phone by the end of June, but the end of June rolled by and he was still a little short.  When he realized over the weekend that if he cleaned out the basement (for a huge chunk of money, because it was LITERALLY a disaster area) and mowed the lawn one last time he'd have enough money, he went after it with single-minded determination and knocked it all out yesterday.

His accounting system is nice and rustic. Hahaha.

He straight up spent 5 hours cleaning out the basement yesterday in the middle of the day {resulting in NINE full bags of garbage}and then finished his evening off with mowing the front and back lawn.  I'm sure he would have loved to head over to the Apple store as soon as he was done, but he managed to hold off until this morning and we headed to the mall before lunch to make all his dreams come true.

 Some of the trash from the basement.

At the store, he didn't want to look like a "hobo" {his words, not mine} handing over a thick wad of cash, so he slipped me the money and I paid instead. 

His biggest dilemma driving over was that he still hadn't decided which color to go with for his brand new iPhone 7.  Hahaha.  He finally settled on the "matte black" and after buying the phone, we got set up at the AT&T store on the other side of the mall.

And there you have it!  Dreams DO come true, folks!!  With enough hard work and determination, the sky is the limit.  Hahaha.  Ethan spent the rest of the day admiring the sleekness of his new phone and exulting over how much better his life is now.  Hahahaha.  I'll be curious to see at what point he realizes that his life is not that much different, but until then, we'll let him keep basking in the glow of such a monumental accomplishment.  ;)