Summer Insanity

Last night my honey took all four boys to go get some firewood for us.  He asked me if I wanted to go along.  And then he laughed.  I think he spotted the twitch in my eye and sensed the excitement that soundly coursed through me.  "Home? Alone? You would take all the boys and let me stay home? Alone?"

He loaded up all the boys and headed out.  I grinned like a wild woman.  I flitted from one room to the other not knowing where to spend my precious alone time.  Do I clean the kitchen?  Do I take a nap...oh how tired I am?  Do I read one of the books I have stacked by the bed and the computer desk? Do I watch the movie waiting for me to watch for two weeks now?

But I knew what I had to do...blog.  I have missed it more than I have missed about anything else this summer.  

Well, blogging and walking the track at school every morning when I dropped the boys off at school all those weeks ago.

So this is what we have been up to...

Cooking.

I have cooked so much lately to keep my boys fed - how much they can eat is insane - that my cupboard has given out on me, crashing down on itself.  This requires me to do some rearranging.  Because I can not - at all - give up one of those cookbooks or printed recipes.

Cooking so much means I have spent a lot of time at the grocery store.  Taking all four boys to the store is a trip.  Good grief, they want EVERY bit of food.  They ask me a million times, "Mama, can we get this?'  Recently, in the ice cream isle, S4 asked, 'Hey, Mama..." for the 1,000th time in a five minute span.

I felt myself slipping into that insane place mother's go.  They get there by their name being called too many times in a row.  It flips a switch in their brain that makes them cower in a corner crying for someone else to come take over.

"What? What? What? What do you want now??????" I  quietly wailed.  It was hardly a peep, more an escaped thought.  There in the ice cream isle I caught a glimpse of my reflection.  My hands were tangled in my hair, massaging the headache that doesn't go away.  My eyes were wild with craziness.

S4 looked at me oddly for a moment.  But only a moment.  "Can we get ice cream?" he asked.

To save myself from having a melt down in the ice cream isle, I said yes.

They are getting to me, these boys.

We have been spending a lot of time at the library as well.

Getting to work the same days the kids programs are is really grand because the boys never miss a single library event.  And all should know by now just how much I love the library.  If you look very very very closely, you can see S1 is holding something. 

A ground squirrel.

Now, when the boys go out to play at the library, Alicia and I find ourselves saying - oftentimes now in unison - "Stay together. Do not try to catch anything. Do not get bit. Do no catch anything.  Did you hear me?  Do not bring any animals into the library.  And stay together."

I don't think they hear us.

When we are home, the boys are catching "things".

This is One Eye Toad.  He is called this because he has one eye.  He lives on our front porch and I don't know how old frogs get but he is pretty old.  We look for him every year for a few years now, always relieved when we find him.  One Eye is never allowed to live anywhere but the porch.  The boys know, this is Mama's toad, it never can live in the sandbox or with the other things.

Other things?

Oh, you know, like five snakes.....

Originally, we purchased the large water tank for baby chicks.  The baby chicks grew up grandly in that water tank lined with sawdust.  And when we moved the tank out back for future chicks, the boys got to thinking how grand a place it would be to house some "critters".  

Like reptiles.

So it is currently the home to five snakes (there were six, but they made their favorite snake (how does one even get to have a FAVORITE snake?) a "home" in the sand box, where it slithered away.  Probably to live somewhere far far far away from boys.), a snapping turtle (a little one) and too many frogs to count.

Due to the drought we are experiencing here in this part of the state, the swamp where all these frogs were caught has dried up.  The boys now feel it is their duty to keep these frogs alive for future generations of frogs.

At least they don't live on the porch anymore.

And when the boys are playing in the sandbox making those beaver habitat's, they are in the woods building forts they would like to move into.

It is quite obviously a safe place to sleep the night in.  Mama just keeps saying no for some reason.  

Silly Mama.

So that, dear friends, is what we have been up to.  On our slow days.  

I forewent a nap to share this with you.  That's how much I have missed you all.  Hope your summer is going grandly too, and you are not insane yet.  Tell me what you have been up to! Link your favorite posts! I am so behind in reading up on posts right now as well. 

Special thanks to my hubby who gave me some free time and didn't complain when all i did was type away at a computer screen.  I love you!