It’s the first day of summer break, and I need to report a crime. I can’t really say when it happened. I feel like I am a pretty observant person, but whoever did it was pretty darn sneaky. Someone stole my babies, and replaced them with grown up man-boys. That’s right. I now have these three, tall, deep voiced, broad shouldered,nearly men-type creatures living in my house. Where did they come from? They can’t possibly be the pink squishy babies I birthed. The sweet innocent toddlers that giggled when I tickled their tummies and tiny feet. There is not a tiny foot among them now. There are just giant feet. Giant, smelly feet…with giant smelly shoes that I trip over all around the house. They shave, and wear deodorant…not as much or as often as they should…but it’s a start. They say things like…”Mom, can I use the car” and “Mom, can my girlfriend come over” and “Mom, can I go to such and such concert”….all in a very deep voice. I haven’t decided how I feel about these “halflings” yet. I mean, it’s definitely nice that they can kind of take care of themselves. I say that in the loosest way it can be said of course. I’ve managed to teach them how to do their own laundry…a feat I am very proud of, and I hope my future daughter -in-laws thank me profusely…but one of them still has no clue how to..um…make macaroni and cheese.   I know, pathetic. This is basic college survival, and he is going into his senior year of high school! I better get into gear on that one!  On the other hand, I am fully certain I could drop my youngest son off in the woods with...

Yard work day…for most families this is a once a week chore, but much to our neighbors disgust…for us it happens about once every 3 months. This is probably why we get the kind of reaction we do from our kids when we tell them it’s yard work day. You’d think we asked them to join the crew on the side of the road digging ditches in Arizona on a mid July day. Or something worse than that. That sounds pretty bad to me though. Anyway, they moan. They cry. They complain. They say things like, “it’s not fair”. That’s my favorite. Fair? You wan’t to talk fair? Is it fair that I have to sit in pee on the toilet seat because you don’t know how to aim? Yeah, I don’t think so. It’s not like we live on a farm people. So, we finally get them out there, and they do the work, and surprisingly, they start to have a good attitude about it. Some of them might even (gasp) have fun. (NO!)  We remind them that it will be another three months and two HOA letters before we have to do it again, and then we go for a swim. All is well...