When You Have A Teenage Brother

When you have a teenage brother, you suddenly have someone else who bosses you around.

He wants to look at the computer and do boring things like work in his shop and read books.

He is strong enough to pick you up and pummel you to the ground.

He controls the tv remote and hoards it at all times.  Cartoons are not his idea of good tv.

But every once in awhile....one has to put him in his place.

And so, my two youngest cooked up a grand plan.

While their brother was laying on his bed reading, they opened the window above the kitchen roof and grabbed a handful of snow.

This snow storm is perfect packing snow.

Then they quietly creeped into his bedroom where he keeps a sheet over his bed so he has his own 'man cave' and hit him smack dab in the middle of his cheek with a snow ball.

Then they ran screaming like the dickens down the steps and behind me.

I probably shouldn't laugh, probably shouldn't post this, but it was too stinking funny not to.

It was funny when they tossed a snowball at him when he was taking too long in the bathroom too.  But then I had to tell them to stop for good and use my mean face.

Still, I found it hilarious.

And, maybe, down deep, the teenager is proud of his brothers impressive scheming and delivery.

The Deliciousness of A Good Book

When I was a little girl, I loved to read.  My nose was buried in a book any day, often all day.  If I was not buried in a book, on little pieces of orange notebook paper my uncle brought home to us in bulk, I would write out stories.

When my brother and I would play for hours at our creek or out in the neighbors hundreds of wooded acres across the road from us, I would make up amazing stories that we would be the hero and heroine of.  We lived many great adventures.

On days my mom and dad would have us helping with weeding, stacking wood, shoveling manure, helping with canning, etc I would make up stories in my head to make the time go faster.  Often I would tell made up stories to my siblings...especially my brother.

My brother has an incredible oral story telling ability.  He amazes me.  He can have me on the floor laughing or scared to death to get out of my vehicle at night...and I'm a grown woman!  I, on the other hand, am the writer of my days (pretty obvious, I know) but a speaker?  Not so much.  Public speaking scares me insanely much.

When my boys were being born and little, it occurred to me one day for some reason that I could not even remember the last book I had read.  When I dug around the house I found some book I had read...the year before.  Since then I have tried to be much more conscientious of reading.  Back when S2 was a baby, I had no computer (can you imagine!), no cell phone, no cable tv, no facebook, no twitter, no blogging (but journaling sporadically) and I was not reading.

Now my time is being pulled in every direction.  The boys are older and one would think that would make life easier and while, yes, I'm not changing diapers anymore, I am also busier.  The amount of food I make in a week is startling to me.  School keeps us hopping.  Work.  The farm.

My husband feels reading is about as thrilling as watching paint dry.  And me curled up with a good book can be annoying to him...if all he did was sharpen chainsaw chains when I wanted to spend time with him, I would be annoyed too.  (Chains for cutting wood...that sounded slightly odd, didn't it?) So we find some tv series we love to watch on Netflix and spend our time at night cuddled on the couch watching tv.  We love it.  Who doesn't love to cuddle with the love of their life?

Alicia introduced me to Goodreads and while I am not very good at keeping it up to date, I do find it helps immensely.  You can make a reading goal for the year and this year I decided to be brave and say I would read 26 books this year.  Considering I had a hard time reading ONE book a month last year this was a huge commitment to me.

Alicia?  She thinks she can read 75 books this year.  She's a reading machine.  I love this about her.

Last night, Jake had to go plow.  I was not happy about this because we had a night planned - nothing  big but still.  I mopped floors, cleaned the kitchen, blogged...I know, I am thrilling...and when I crawled into bed I thought, "Gasp! I could read for a bit."

I snuggled into bed, pulling my special Strawberry Shortcake blanket around me and propping pillows. It was eleven.  I'd been tired all evening, I'd suffered a severe headache on the right side of my head that had set my eye brow to twitching and while I was feeling fine now (and in large part because I refused to look up my symptoms on the internet, it would have me dead by morning, I was sure) I knew I shouldn't read too late.

I had read the first chapter a week or so before and thought it so so.

About four chapters in I was hooked.

I couldn't put it down.  I had to know what happened.  I heard a vehicle rumble and thought Jake was back from plowing perhapes...but it wasn't him. No, it was my neighbor.  Leaving. For. Work.

That's right...it was nearly five in the morning.

I had no idea, and I was *this* close to finishing.

At five thirty, I finished.  I closed the book and rubbed the cover.  It was a delicious evening this book and I had had.  I sent a text to Alicia, who I knew was just waking up.  She was the one who told me to read The Hunger Games series, I shouldn't have doubted that she would know I would like this book that normally I wouldn't even bother to look at twice.

After a few hours of sleep and a *few* cups of coffee, I am still thinking over this book.  That's the fun about the books - even when you are done reading you aren't done living the story.

I was thrilled and pained to see there is a second book coming out in May.  

This post - rambling long as it is - isn't to tell you read this book (although I would recommend it in a heartbeat), it's just to remind you to read.  A book.  Not just your computer or a magazine but a book where you live with the characters.  

It's a delicious thing, a good book.

Walnut War

Often times, people ask me what it's like to have FOUR boys.

Well, it's just normal every day life to us.

Here on our farm, we are blessed (ahem) with walnut trees. Every year my husband is sure we are on a gold mine of money if we could just shuck and shell and package and sell these nasty walnuts. So we pick them up. We put them in baskets. In the spring we toss them in the outdoor wood burner we have.

These humongous trees we have in our drive way send these wonderful little hard concrete feeling balls to rain down on us. You can hear them ping the shed. They pound our roof. The torpedo towards your head. It is no joke that at times the boys have gone out to play with helmets on.

If you are truly blessed, you can get three walnuts bound together that have fallen from the tree still bound as three. These the boys bring into the house to display on my desk or throughout the house. We are truly blessed (ahem).

Or you just leave the walnuts in the yard and they make great baseballs. Or you use them as a fetching ball for the dog, and when she picks one up in her mouth you throw her another and then watch her spastic mind try to figure out what to do. That's kinda funny, in a mean sort of way. You can just leave the walnuts in your yard for the mower to find too. Then they turn into torpedo's, shot out by the whirling blades. Then they are weapons you just don't want to deal with at all....and windows in your home just don't stand a chance against them.

BUT, if you are a bunch of brothers blessed with these wonderful walnut treasures, you might do this.........

We Are Gonna Starve

Tonight, as dinner was cooking, I told the older two boys to clear the table and the younger two to pick up the living room. The table was still strewn with papers and dishes from this morning and the syrup container from our breakfast of pancakes. The boys brought home the newest brochures of things for them to sell for the school and they were strewn from hither to yon.

Dinner was nearly done. I needed coffee, desperately. And I was not in a mood to be toyed with. The boys had spent the whole afternoon watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (because I have found them to be exhausted come Thursday, but Mickey Mouse Clubhouse? Really? I'd take a hunting show over that!) and when I said "move", I expected them to "move".

They didn't.

By this time Daddy was home and Daddy seen the boys not moving on their chores and Daddy and Moma heard when S3 stepped on the matchbox car on the messy living room and fell to the ground crying and holding his foot.

S4 was mumbling at him and playing with his beloved car, making sure it was still in tact when Moma stormed in.

Oh, I stormed.

And I promptly sent them up to bed, to stay on their beds and not come down until I said so.

Mean Moma.

Daddy couldn't resist, he had to hear what they were saying.

And then he gave me a play by play. S4 began blaming S3 for stepping on his car and getting them in this mess. "You shoulda not cried" he explained.

S3 bemoaned the fact that his foot hurt.

S4 began to sniffle. "Now we won't get to eat dinner. And I am hungry. We are gonna starve and then I'll DIE!" He began to wail.

Big brother came to the rescue here. "No", S3 informed him, "We won't starve for three days. We can go three days without food. A big kid on the playground told me so it has to be true!"

S4 wasn't buying it. "But I am hungry and I will starve THIS DAY!" He then began bemoaning the fact that it was all his brothers fault that he was going to starve and die.

He is such a positive little fellow.

There was more discussion and it wasn't long before they realized they needed water more than food so S3 was brave and came sneaking down the steps.

And I, oh yes blog readers, with a very firm voice and straight face, told him to get back up those steps and not come down again, they didn't need water.

And then I might have maybe giggled as they were sure their fate was doomed.

Now, keep in mind, while this is going on the table is getting set by the older two boys in lightning time. The entire time the two little guys were upstairs was - at the most - 15 minutes.

But they were going to starve, they were sure.

Daddy did a good job of setting them straight, informing them they need to listen to their Moma and then they sulked down the steps where a barely holding the giggles in Moma was given a soulful apology, given kisses on the cheek and they sat silently waiting for their dinner.

After dinner they were able to dine on Sugar Cookies. And now they are watching a John Deere movie on how to grow food - just in case, you know.