A Little Merit Badge Q & A

After a few death defying days of Spring Break Shenanigans,
I decided to rein Connor and his buddy Sev back in from their dare-devil stuntfest by forcing them to work on some long neglected, half-finished Merit Badges.  Having to put pencil to paper was definitely not what these boys had in mind for any part of their school holiday, but I insisted because I was getting desperate for a break from their crazed antics and spare their lives with a much needed injury-free day. 

I should have enticed them inside with video games, but I did not. 
I should have persuaded them inside with food, but I did not. 
My plan for a low key afternoon was much more productive.  And this was a very bad idea.

Let's just say boys do not like to do anything that resembles school work if they're on holiday.  And they will definitely let you know...

Check out Connor's brief but direct answer on his Family Life Merit Badge Worksheet...

Ah, Family Life!  You try to save a kid's life and this is what you get!

Spring Break-Less

A miracle occurred around our house over Spring Break, the miracle being that no one ended up in the ER.  

Just a few hours into day #1, we soon realized that our decision to stay home and take it easy over Spring Break may not have been a wise move.  We quickly discovered this is a dangerous prospect because kids who stay home tend to get bored, and more particularly, the kids around our house like to stave off boredom by entagling themselves in bizarre and dangerous high adventure antics.  Within the first six hours of their vacation they tried their hand at two
never-before-seen sports...

Tarp Jumping off the tool shed:
I think Connor and Severin have been watching base jumping or something on some crazy x-games channel and wanted to give it a try.  Thank goodness they didn't try it off the barn roof and opted for the tool shed instead.  I thought for sure someone was gonna break their arm.  Luckily I don't think the boys ever summoned the courage to actually jump.  Whew!

And Pallet Racing:
Apparently skateboarding around the driveway isn't compelling enough.  The boys found an old pallet and attached a couple of skateboards underneath and then surfed it down the driveway.

 

The boys quickly learned that their erroneous assumption that a croquet stick would be a great makeshift rudder/brake was, quite frankly, beyond inadequate.  As was my decision to stand downhill in a small buffer zone off to the side for a little photo-op of their perilous pallet adventure.  

This was taken just as I realized there was no buffer zone and I had to leap into the gravel to spare my life:

Despite the fact that the croquet stick was useless both for steering and for braking, the cozy barbed-wire fence proved an excellent and fail-proof stop gap.

(uh, look how huge my shadow is! Holy Cow!

it appears as though I could use a little P90x.)

They made several runs until Connor's friend Severin suffered a classic pallet surfing injury.  The poor kid got his hand stuck in the slats which makes it quite difficult to exit the moving vehicle should it suddenly lurch to a stop upon impact with gravel.  After rocking back and forth for several minutes in the fetal position while squeezing his mashed up hand, Sev got up and announced he was officially retiring from their new-found sport.

 
...And to think this was just day ONE!  I was going to have to come up with a plan if these boys were going to survive the rest of the week unscathed.

Pint-Sized Plagiarizers

Parent Teacher Conferences are always an eye opener.  These little meetings are always a surprise.  Kinda like a parole board hearing, you're never really sure how it's gonna go.  With certain children in the house I go into these meetings fairly confident and with some of the other kids, well, I must admit I pre-medicate with  Alieve (that all-day strong stuff) just in case things take an unexpected turn.

These conferences are not unlike having your palm read.  There's a large amount of uncertainty that comes with the territory.  Almost always, there's at least one teacher who drops some sort of curious revelation about your kid that you just didn't know.  But this year it was not the teacher but my own kid that filled me in on his own scholastic scandal.

It was AFTER a middle school teacher conference, that was going really really well I might add, that I learned of a sneeky misdeed.  As I left  the classroom, intoxicated with relief, I made my way out into the hallway where my son pointed out HIS OWN misdeed.

He said, "Hey mom, see my math project there on the wall?"  He was pointing to the math project in RED:

He went on, "That's Sev's right next to mine in green.  He got a better grade than me and mine even had more detail than his."

"That happens sometimes," I reassured him.

"No mom.  Look at them closer," he said.

So I looked at Connor's...

Then I looked at Sev's...

"Uhhh, Sev sure writes a lot like you do," I say.

"Yeah, well, that's cause I wrote his for him."

Huh??

He sheepishly shrugged his shoulders, "Mom, I was at his house and he had to get all his homework done before we could go outside.  So I told him I'd do his math project for him so we could get done faster."

I was still staring at my son.

"Mom, that's not the bad part," the little  charlatan insisted.  "The bad part is that I put more work and details in mine and Sev got a better grade than me!  Isn't that crazy?"

I just shook my head.  The kid may not be a full blown plagiarizer just yet but from the looks of things he's teetering on the slippery slope between flippant forgery and fraud.

I may need another Alieve.

And to think, Teacher Conference had gone really well up until that point.

10 Minute Pioneers

Our neighborhood had a little power outage the other day.  It lasted all day.  Actually, all night too.  And my guess would be that if you asked any of our kids or any of their friends who were at our house during the whole ordeal, they would probably not call 12 hours without power a "little" outage.

Long ago Mark and I used to live on a ranch way out of town and back in those days, the first snowfall often brought several feet of heavy snow and along with it, a power outage that would last days and sometimes an entire week.  So a half a day without power is hardly noticeable.  We quickly learned how to prepare for any power outage in grand style.

Now that we live right outside the city limits and power outages are rare, we're a bit out of practice but nonetheless prepared with all our old stuff.  No sooner does the power go out, everyone in the Skillman household quickly springs into action.  We head directly to the flashlight cupboard and take out a battery operated lantern.  With that, we then head to our pantry and set flame to our plethora of kerosene lanterns and then go out to the garage and get "The Box".  Within minutes you can hardly tell there's been an electrical interruption.  And soon neighbors begin to call wondering why our house is so full of lights and why our power isn't out like everyone else's.

During our latest outage, the boys got all excited and prepared to brave an evening without things that plug in.  This time, Connor's friend Severin was over and he couldn't have been more ecstatic.  He pronounced with giddy excitement that he loved power outages because he always wanted to be a pioneer.

They all began to make plans on how much fun they were about to have braving a black-out; read some books, pitch a tent indoors, cook on the BBQ...But after about ten minutes Severin is wondering if the phone works so he can call home and see if the power's out at his house too.  He's decided if it isn't, he just might want to go home, taking Connor with him, so they can resume gaming.

Mitchell checked the phones, then suddenly he gets an idea and heads strait for the garage to rummage more thoroughly through "The Box".  Soon, he comes back with a hand-crankable TV that could have only of come from some sort of Armageddon catalog.  Mitch winds the thing up and a smile spreads across the faces of all my stalwart pioneers.

Soon, the kids (including Mark) abandon their frontier fantasies and gather around the TV set...happy to be spared from an annoying lack of power.

Apparently, pioneering had lost its pizzaz...

Bottom Feeders

Mitchell and his friend recently discovered a new way to make a quick and easy buck: become bottom feeders.  This, by definition, is one that feeds low on the food chain; a scavenger.  And that, by no coincidence, would be the exact methodology for Mitchell's newest enterprise.

Due to my advanced motherly-radar-system [MRS], Mitchell's exploitations were uncovered before the whole ordeal could be officially classified as a major scam.  Thankfully this mommy gig
has helped me develop a keen sense of awareness-what I call "parental paranoia".  This basically means I can spot a little white lie as soon as it's uttered by any of my offspring, I know when unbrushed teeth are being falsely passed off as brushed from a mile away, and I've developed a keen eye which enables me to discern when a flagrant case of boxer fraud has been committed-which is when a child claims to have changed their underwear after being sent up for a shower when indeed the boy is clean and the underthings are not.  But most important of all, I can hear the sound of a scam a mile away.  Which is exactly the sound I heard over the weekend.

And what exactly does a scam sound like you ask?  Well, in this particular case it's the sound of a ten-year old boy rummaging repeatedly in his penny bank.  The third time I heard Connor run upstairs followed by the rattle of change, I officially raised our personal homeland security threat level to orange and launched a full-blown investigation.

After a quick minute of motherly detective work this is what I uncovered:

Connor has a Wii but spends most of his life dreaming of the day his brother Mitchell will let him get on his X-box.

On this particular day, the day of the incident,  when Connor had his friend Severin over, they spent a good part of the morning begging and pleading with Mitchell to let them play a game on his x-box.  And of course Mitchell spent a good part of the day repeatedly telling them NO.

Then MItchell was suddenly seized with the thought that here was an opportunity to make a few bucks.  So Mitch and his friend came up with the big idea to start charging the boys by the hour for the privilege of playing the x-box, which the two naive 10-year olds were more than happy to pay. 

 

Every hour on the hour you'd hear them bound up the stairs and raid Connors penny bank..

 

At first I thought it was so nice of the older boys to finally let the younger ones have a crack at the x-box.  Until I soon realized that the older boys were in another room unusually content with video games made "for babies".  The kind of video games that collect dust and are only played by young girls and small uncoordinated children, games like "Mario Party" and "Disney Princess; Enchanted Forest".  Meanwhile the younger boys were playing war on the x-box.   Hmmmmm...something wasn't adding up.

 

Then at the sound of change rattling from upstairs, it suddenly clicked...I was hearing...A SCAM.

In all, Mitch had made about 10 bucks before I figured it all out.
TEN BUCKS! A small price to pay for being a gullible little brother.

And now...as for Mitch...next time he wants to eat I think I'll charge him ten bucks for a fork and perhaps another ten for the plate.  We'll see who's the bottom feeder now!

When You Work For Your Dad

Now that summer is here, Connor has decided to hang out with his good friend Severin a few days a week.  The big catch is that Sev has a summer job.  He's been hired by his dad to work down at the family shop so he can earn a little money for scout camp.  Sev's Eleven, so as you can imagine, the sort of work he's doing is probably everything the real workers don't want to do...sweeping, weeding, cleaning out the gutters-grunge work.

On the days Connor spends the night he gets up and goes to work with Sev.  And while Sev gets paid, Connor's working for free on a "help-your-friend-with-their-chores-so-you-can-go-and-play-sooner kind of deal.

Sev's keeps an official time card to keep track of his work hours and when Connor goes down to help he can't resist tracking his time too:

The thing gave me a good laugh.

At first they started out working nice even hours.  On June 16th they both put in a solid two hours of work.  But then the next day they only put in 1 1/2 hours.  Did they get more efficient? Or just plain sick of working already?

Then, I think they realized actually counting up hours was doing MATH and realized that math should not be apart of any 11-year old's summer vacation.  So they switched to the method of simply listing the time they clocked in and out without trying to figure up the figures.  They'd just as soon leave that for dad...he's not on summer vacation.

Next I wondered what started happening on June 17th because they began to clock out at uneven hours.  They both showed up to work at 11:30-a nice even number.  Then they suddenly quit working at 2:13pm.  2:13pm?  I figured Sev's mom must have called them in for lunch or something.

But my favorite entry of all are Sev's last two entries when he clocked in at 8:55am one morning and 9:03am the next.  That's the serious perks that come from being employed by your dad.  You can show up at 9:03 and nobody's gonna fire you.  And even better than showing up at three minutes past any hour, he can leave at 11:52 just because he feels like it.  Perhaps he got hungry, thristy, or just because it got too hot outside and he decided he'd rather go home and swim in your pool than keep weed whacking.

That's my kinda job.

I only hope Sev's dad majored in math since he will need to rely on these skills to figure out what to pay his son.  He's gotta figure out what to pay a kid who worked 2 hours and 57 minutes on one day and 1 hour and 40 minutes the next.

Autograph Hound

About a month ago I had asked a friend, whose son pitches for an east coast team, if his team would be coming out anytime soon to play against any west coast rivals.  Sure enough, he was scheduled to play the S.F. Giants right after school got out.

Once I told Connor, who happens to be a Giant Giants fan, he was convinced it was destiny that we get tickets and head to San Francisco and watch the game.

Not only did he and his friend Severin decide they wanted to go to the game,  they decided to make a scheme of all 11-year old schemes...see if they could get our hometown hero to sign a bunch baseballs.

I wasn't about to tell them there were two major problems with their idea.

First, I'm not really a fan of stalking stars.  I'm just not the kinda gal that would ask anyone famous for their autograph.  No matter who it is.  But I've discovered that when it involves my son's love affair for autographed baseballs, I end up becoming the thing I loath the most: An Autograph Hound.

The second problem with their plan, as anyone who's a fan of baseball knows, is that this isn't always an easy operation to carry out.  Most of the time you can't get close to the players unless they come to you-which they hardly ever do.  And when they're on the field, they've got their game faces on-so scream as you might, they tune everything out.

But Connor and his buddy Sev were undeterred.  Mostly due to the fact that Connor had obtained signed balls with an accompanied high-five from not one but TWO of his most favorite players the last time we took him to a game.  Though I have assured him ever since, that it was an extreme fluke, a total stroke of luck, but he still doesn't believe me.

The morning of the game, we loaded "The Beast" full of boys and headed south with only a weak plan of attack: 7 brand new baseballs, a lame idea, and a Sharpie.

Along the way we made a classic stop for lunch:

I'm not really sure what this pose is about.  Perhaps they were trying to see what In-N-Outs arrow was pointing at...

Then it was back on the road and off to San Francisco for apparently a few more weird poses.

San Francisco's not the place where "The Beast" fits in.  Our quick jaunt down Lombard Street  seemed to seize fear into the hearts of  tourists who fled for their lives to the safety of the meager sidewalks that edged the famous street.

Then this parking structure seemed to confirm our car's epic large-ness.  As you can sorta-see from the picture of our beastly Ford Excursion trying to squeeze itself under a parking structure (the top of our car had three inches of headroom to spare):

During our tour of San Francisco, Severin proudly spots something close to home...fenders.  Here Sev, Connor, and Mark proudly pose with the bright red fenders his father made for the trolley buses in San Francisco:

Then, its off to the serious business of becoming (gulp)...an autograph hound :

First, you must stand out from the crowd and make yourself visible.  This means making it perfectly clear you're a huge baseball fan:

Next, scope out the field for your player:

Unfortunately, our player happens to be in the center of this pic.  Very far away.  But the boys are undeterred.

Then when our victim moves to left field so the boys follow their prey:

Connor and Sev have posted themselves right in front of the crowd and luckily stick out wearing their bold orange and black uniforms.  But the lady glaring from the field doesn't look like she is gonna be much help in their pursuit of a signed ball.

Sometimes luck just doesn't go your way.

Unless you have mother has an uncanny knack for loudness.  This under appreciated talent of mine finally got to shine.

When I arrived down where the boys were at they'd been screaming our player's name without so much as getting a sideways glance.  Sev's dad Brett said that no matter what they tried they just couldn't get his attention.  Here's four of the boys wondering what to do next.

A sinister smirk spreads across my face.

For years I have searched for a talent that I can call my own.  I can't play a musical instrument or sing in tune.  I'll never be a champion at sports or brain bowls.  I've just always lacked a definitive talent.  So a few years back I got tired of being undertalented and decided to make up my own classifications in what should/could be considered a talent.  I certainly wasn't gonna be an achiever of any sort in the traditional talent categories.   It was then that I came to appreciate some of my awkward skills that have been largely under-cherished and decided that I am an undisputed holler champion and even a grand champion when it comes to clapping.  I can clap so loud I can start standing ovations at any event I attend-my favorite pastime is starting a round of awkwardly mis-placed ovations.

And here, suddenly, my talent found the place to shine.  Under the bright lights of a crowded baseball game.  All I had to do was wait for our hometown boy to come within my voice's unfortunate but legendary range of fire.

Then, the final step in getting a player's autograph is to use the secret weapon:  You gotta yell something only the player knows...

...and sure enough, I yelled two simple words (the exact words are a trade secret-wouldn't want you to out autograph hound me at the next game) and then we suddenly had ourselves a player!

And a bunch of signed balls.

A big thanks to J. for coming over and giving our kids the ultimate highlight to any baseball game.  He was kind enough to come over and say hi,  give us a hearty round of high-fives, and even come back after warming up and sign more balls.  He didn't even mind that the boys were wearing the wrong logos on their orange and black uniforms!

At this point, now that Connor and Severin were basking in their fait accompli, with Connor knowing another signed ball will be protected in a little plastic case and sit on a dusty shelf somewhere in his room, I can only hope my son will one day repay my reckless support of his childhood dreams by bringing me boxes of chocolate when I'm aged and withering away in an old folks home.

Till then, I have to settle for being a loud mouth who can clap real loud.  Not a pretty picture but the only talent I've got.

The Lone Olympian

Thanks to his G-Ma (a.k.a Gramma Joyce) Connor caught the spirit of the Olympics when she came out to visit a few weeks ago.  In his fury of excitement, and to our dismay, he completely filled up our DVR with hours and hours of winter games.

Most late afternoons, there Connor sat like an Olympic junkie, avoiding homework, teeth brushing, eating, and even his usual circle of friends (true warning signs).  He took his place on the couch as the lone spectator watching everything from snowboarding to even ice dancing!  He was into EVERY SINGLE SPORT.

Here he is with Edward Scissorhands (the cat) taking in a hockey play-off game...

 Which team USA happened to win...
before we eventually lost.

 

Disappointed at his family's lack of interest, Connor tried to kindle a little enthusiasm amongst the ranks by sharing a few of his favorite things about the Olympics.  He did this by making a little speech during dinnertime and then forced us to watch youtube clips which he had marked "favorite".  Among the highlights of Connor's pep-rally speech were:

The Mascots

 

-which only peaked Chloe's interest mildly.

The "Bum Shove" in the Speed Skating Relay

-which got my attention, 

since I've got a freakish preoccupation towards

gragarious shoving and good humored socks to the arm.

and lastly,  he attempted to sway us by showing us

The Epic Spills...

-which excited the remaining family members who were still holding out.

After the Olympics came to an official close, Connor seemed to suffer from massive withdrawals.  The thought of having to wait another FOUR years for the next winter games seemed overwhelming to a young boy who has only been on the planet a mere eleven years.  Though perhaps the calamity was due mostly to the fact that now he had no legitimate excuse to avoid his homework, teeth brushing, and room cleaning.   He began to look so melancholy we took pity on the boy.  Something had to be done to suppress his post-Olympic-separation anxieties.

There was only one thing to do.  Hold an Olympics of our own.

[commence Olympic theme song.]

It was the poor Hassells who ended up being our guinea pigs for a family-style Olympics.  The third family we tried to beguile was out due to a broken arm.  This meant we had to start dividing ourselves into teams by grouping everyone into their birth season; spring, summer, fall, winter.  Then each group picked a country to represent.  Then, we let the games begin!

First up, the Two-Man Table Sled:

Then, on to Skiing:

Next, Curling (This was Mitchell's invention- a paper bowl with a tennis ball underneath):

(please note Brett's "Agony of Defeat" pose, above.)

And finally, Broom/Mop/Swiffer/Vacuum Hockey:

All of course while serious score keeping took place:

And no Olympic meet could be complete without a metal ceremony where Gold, Silver, and Bronze gets awarded (or should I say Twinkie, Ding Dong, and Reese's Peanut Butter Cup?):

Winning the Gold definitely took the edge off Connor's withdrawal symptoms.

...and, let's just say I'm glad I was the official photographer for the events so that I didn't have to stand with my team on the loser lowest podium.  However, the Bronze Reeses Peanut Butter Cup "Metal" was by far the most delectable award presented.  The chocolaty peanut butter goodness more than made up for coming in last.

Oh, and yes, please note the humility at which Mark (in the blue t-shirt) accepts the Gold.  You can see for yourself one of the many reasons why this humble man is the love of my life.

Let's just hope this quenched Connor's Olympic thirst for another four years.  I haven't the courage or self-esteem to lose that bad again for a few more years.