Christmas Break Activities

Since school got out, we have had a steady stream of neighborhood kids over. Yesterday the boys were boys and I tried stay out of it and just let them be. At first they were making bike jumps with car lifts and big pieces of plywood. But somehow that morphed into the goal of trying to chop up the plywood. (It probably had something to do with setting off two little firecrackers, which they had the sense to ask permission for first.) They had one little hand saw that didn't seem to work well, because I saw them spending more time using old garden tools to hack at it. A fire pit was their ultimate goal, of course. What is it with boys and fire? They eventually got enough wood chips to make a decent pile. They made a circle of rocks around it and lit the middle. The girls joined in at that point. We didn't have any big marshmallows, so they tried roasting mini ones. They all smelled like campfire and after the friends were sent home, my kids were sent to the showers. It was a wildly successful afternoon and evening and they all went to bed saying that I was the best mom in the world, at least for that night.