Today was really just an F0

This morning when Ant and Bubba woke up, they went to pee and eat breakfast, and then they started lobbing erasers at Chris, who was still asleep.

"STOOOOOOPPP," he groaned.

"It wasn't me!" cried Ant.

"Whatever, Anthony," said Bubba.

Ant giggled.

A few minutes later, Chris roared again.  I left my book and found the boys giggling back in Ant's room.  I told them to clean up first, then get the hell out of the house and check in in an hour.

"I'll clean up later," Ant said.

"I'm sorry?"

"I mean, can I clean it up later?"

"Nope.  You have six minutes until 10:00; get it done and go play."  In addition to the no-no of telling me what he's going to do, I also know this will take 14 times as long later tonight when there's no help and no incentive.

Six minutes later, the room is picked up, the boys are at the park, and I'm reading my book.  Chaos just returned to check in, though.  They are so loud.  They come in the door like pinballs.  They got some water, yelled at each other, then went out back to swordfight with sticks.  I had to tell them to stop running into the house- literally bouncing off the side- and five minutes ago I had to go teach them how to close a sliding glass door.  I didn't realize you could slam a slider until we moved here.  Their approach is to throw it so hard it bounces back open.  I can only assume that their goal is to test the limits of the door's construction.  I don't know which will break first, the frame or the glass.  Jesus.  The other night, Dad and I were watching Louis C.K. and he's got this bit about the difference between having boys or girls.  He said boys just destroy things- you can track their damage in dollar amounts, like tornado ratings- while a girl does emotional damage.  I periodically have to remind myself that I always hoped for boys.

They lost interest in the sticks and nobody lost an eye, so we're good.  The boys are back in Ant's room playing video games and I hear Chris moving.

Yesterday we went to lunch before taking Dad to the airport.  He wanted to go early so he could find some gift shop items and get through security, but it might take four minutes to walk the entire airport here, so I knew something else was up.  Chris asked me to drive because he felt horrible, so he sat in the backseat with Ant.  They could not leave each other alone, so Dad's last ten minutes with us consisted of the boys car wrestling.  At the last light, I looked over at Dad (the car rocking and threats flying back and forth behind us) and said, "Ah.  Now I understand why you want to get there early."  At the last curve where we slowed to 15mph, Ant let out the loudest, longest, instant headache inducing screech because he had started to pinch and Chris pinched him back- on the nipple.  It was a great way to end the visit.

Other than that, the visit went fine.  Thanksgiving was awesome.  I posted some pictures on Facebook (and promptly got in trouble with Chris), but I will collect all of them and give you a nice picture blog.  For now I'm off to do dishes and make up silly songs to sing to the girls.