Lesson #1

Never underestimate the curiosity of little boys...

So, a few months ago as I was helping my oldest son with homework, my middle two boys decided they wanted some s'mores. They proceeded to get graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate chips out of the pantry and place everything strategically on my kitchen table. Suddenly, I smelled a terrible burning smell. You know the kind when you burn the popcorn in the microwave and then your whole house smells like burnt popcorn for a week? Yes, that's the smell. (Did I mention this is our brand new house that we've only lived in for a few months?) Well, I quickly ran down the stairs to discover they had put the chocolate chips in a bowl and put it in the microwave on HIGH for 5 minutes. UGH! I quickly removed the stinky bowl from the microwave (the bowl ended up in the garbage), and opened all the windows. When I saw the mess on the table I calmly told my boys that I was already quite upset and if they didn't want me to get more so, then they had better clean up the mess. I went back upstairs to finish helping big brother. When the homeowrk was done I returned to the kitchen to find that it was relatively clean. The only problem was that they had used the dustbuster to vacuum all the crumbs off my table and that had left a myriad of scratches all over the surface of my (also brand new) solid wood table. Sigh..... The lesson learned here is to never leave little boys alone or out of earshot for more than a few moments... especially if there is more than one boy because the mischief will increase exponentially.