I hit my children . . .

I hit my children . . . but I missed them more often.  J-son says my aim is miserable.

J-son came home from the Dyslexia Center late last night and called to his brother to come out and have an after-dark snow ball fight with him.  While the two boys suited up, their wily mother dressed quickly and took up an offensive position in the tree house.  When the unsuspecting boys came outside, I had my ambush all ready.

The best thing about a snowball fight is, even if you miss, it's a hit.  I can't aim worth beans, I discovered, but that didn't keep the boys from yelling with glee and running around as I did my best to pelt them both.  J-son responded by making snow balls the size of cannon balls and trying to lob them up at me.

My husband is out of town for two days, so he didn't get to try his arm.  Instead, we had some Mommy-son time, and it was surprisingly like summer camp.  (Or winter camp?)

After the snow ball rout with lots of trash-talking, we wrote letters to our sponsored World Vision kids [and total score! --- I discovered we could send email, instead of snail mail.  That was a blast!].  And we wound down the evening by having a slumber party of sorts in my bedroom, with both boys and the dog sleeping on my floor.

The slumber party was an odd sort of off-shoot from this past fall's problems.  At one point in October, J-son's behavior had gotten so bad at night (this was after we'd tried removing his bedroom door, but before we put an alarm on his door) that I made him sleep on my bedroom floor just so I would know where he was.  To my surprise, he found this comforting and comfortable.  Then N-son got jealous, and wanted to sleep on my floor, too.   So now, every once in a while, as a special treat I let my teenaged boys come slumber in my room.  

I guess you never know what's going to be a hit until you try it.