Long weekends ...

The kids love long weekends from school, but they can be difficult for parents.  On Thursday of last week I began thinking about what we would do over the long weekend since it would just be me and the 4 boys (my darling did his first half marathon in Phoenix over the weekend).  I was really looking forward to the time with them and planned to spend time with friends playing and watching all of our kids together.  That was until LoveBug decided to move the playground into the classroom on Friday afternoon with an unauthorized game of tackle football.  Good-bye fun Friday afternoon and Saturday morning; hello enforcement of consequences.

I will spare you the details of his antics, but it did put a hitch in our Saturday plans.  He sat at the table for over an hour Saturday morning trying to figure out how to apologize to his teacher.  The problem that he encountered was my requirement that he come up with something nice to do for her and commit to it in writing.  He finally settled on picking up toys after school.

I would love to say that it stopped there, but LoveBug was also in trouble for hiding his DS under his pillow on Friday night when he had been sent to bed early and then staying up playing it.  I knew what he was up to, but I was spending time with HoneyBunny and JellyBean and made the decision to deal with LoveBug on Saturday morning.  I made the right decision, but it made for a less than spectacular day.  Saturday was a LONG day of single parenting and conflict resolution!  No play dates for us.  I wouldn't want to invite anyone into that chaos.

We finally got back on track Sunday after church.  We played in the snow ... okay SugarBear and I shoveled while the other boys played.  They rode bikes on the tennis court in the snow, (If only I had my phone with me to capture that moment-I would have never thought it was possible to ride in those conditions), and then we went inside and played on the XBox Kinect together.  JellyBean rocked at Fruit Ninja!  Then we had a Nerf battle in the playroom where the boys tediously explained all of the rules (they have A LOT of rules) to me before ganging up on me with those pesky little velcro bullets.  We then retired to the den for a movie night.  It was a great day spent with my boys.

Monday we slept in late and then it was much of the same ... movies, play time, tickle wars and it was all topped off with a trip to get burgers and ice cream (and gas for the snowblower).  In all honesty I'm not ready for them to go back to school tomorrow.  I would gladly take a few more days at home with my boys.

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