Putting the Wicked Witch of the West to Shame

I'll spare all the many ways I outbitched the witch tonight, and reflect on this one telling incident.

I've lately returned to gummy bears as potty treats, since Alice has decided to SELECTIVELY abandon her potty-trained status. Amazingly, my big kids kept eating the potty treats, no matter what I said. The little girls are totally capable of saying no to themselves in favor of the rule—not so, the almost-adults. 

I told my big kids, "Anyone who gets into the gummies again, has to buy me a whole Costco bag." Like everything else, they completely ignored me. Over and over, all three of them! 
When they got home I informed them that all three of them had to go to Costco TONIGHT and each buy me a bag of gummy bears. (Can you fathom that quantity???)

I immediately get all kinds of passionate argument about how they can't even get into costco, and "my wallet's in dad's car" and "it won't work," blah, blah, blah. "Figure it out. Solve it!" I explain that they'll need cash to buy something at Costco with my card, "So go get cash first." (They ignored this advice.)

Argue, argue, argue. Heat! Fury! Conflagration! 

I finally told them, "You will not have dinner, FHE, treats, NOTHING until you've gone to Costco and EACH OF YOU BUYS ME A BAG OF GUMMY BEARS!"

They all get real calm-like and Nancy says, "Check it out, this is like the first time in two years that mom's following through on a threat." And that was it.  

I can see, I've trained them perfectly to ignore me.