Let's Do That Again!

Ever on the lookout for something to kill time on the weekends, I suggested the boys find a "project" to do with daddy.  Now, since this was the day they got to empty their money jars, count it, and spend it, they were eager to find as many last-minute ways to earn some coins as possible.  

There is a never-ending amount of "projects" that can be worked on in the backyard, so that is where I sent them to find one.  After putting bikes and wagons back in the garage and throwing away the week's collections of "weapons" that Mitchell always piles up from every time we walk somewhere (mostly big sticks and sometimes left-overs from the construction site that is our street right now), they decided not to wait for the gardeners to come and begin piling up all those leaves!

Well, this is where the "work" stopped and the "playing" began.  Isn't that the way work should be for young boys, out in the back yard with their dad?  I must say, Matt did most of the work, but he didn't seem to mind as long as the boys were with him, flattening and scattering the piles of leaves almost as fast as he could make them.

In the end, we all decided not to actually get rid of the leaves.  They were just too much fun, and, to be honest, would take a lot more work to actually bag them up than any of us are prepared for, considering we have a gardener coming to do it anyways.  When it was finally time to come in and the boys got their "wages" for all their hard work, they both decided they'd like to do that project again.  Anytime, boys.  Anytime.

You'll Shoot Your Eye Out!

I know a lot of moms (and some dads too) are anti-guns and weapons when it comes to play things for their boys.  How you keep them from making their own weapons out of sticks, pieces of race track, and toilet paper tubes is something I'd be interested in hearing about though!

I don't feel very strongly on the subject.  I do give them some boundaries and rules regarding their use of weapons, but I do I allow them to mock fight and use foam swords and to let their creativity abound when it comes to fashioning their own weapons and hunting down "bad guys" in the back yard.  Their world is full of sticks and strings and interesting-shaped things that are just begging to be used in this manner!

So my boys play with weapons and feel quite heroic while doing it, I must say.  Today, they watched a bit of Robin  Hood before they tired of that and decided the day was just too beautiful to sit on a couch watching cartoons and they'd rather BE Robin Hood out in the backyard!

That is how I left things when I took off for the grocery store.  When I returned home, they had fully emersed themselves in the game and even enlisted the biggest boy: daddy (who is also a HUGE Robin Hood fan.)  Ben was busy shooting arrows at multiple targets with his home-made bow fashioned out of a piece of race track and a string (don't think that toy will work as a race track anymore...)  

Mitchell and Dad were up to worse though - they had out Matt's pellet gun and were shooting little yellow foam things all over the yard!  Now, these do not come out very fast and Mitchell was heavily supervised anyways, but that gun does not look like a toy and I cringe every time all three boys play with it together.  Although it looks it, it is not actually a dangerous toy - not unless, that is, you shoot it at your or someone else's eye!  

Boys are boys and, in my opinion, it is healthy for them to pretend to fight bad guys.  I love to watch them rescuing each other and other pretend characters.  But every time that ominous-looking toy gun comes out, the words of all the adult figures from "A Christmas Story" echo in my head: "You'll shoot your eye out!"  Someday that gun will mysteriously disappear and I will claim no knowledge of it's whereabouts...