The best way to put kids to bed.........

Is to make them work/play outside for 7 hours.

For the last 2 evenings the boys have not gone inside until the sun goes down, which has been so nice...they may be a bit on the muddy side, but that's what boys do.

Monday night we played outside with every outside toy we own, it was like Christmas all over again opening up the storage shed where their toys are. They put a couple miles on their electric Jeep, and ran over some small shrubbery and into a couple of trees.

Then I started a fire in the burning barrel and it was ON. Both boys are pyromaniacs! OK, all 3 of us are. We burned everything, including this wooden snowman that Steph told me to throw away the other day...Maxim would have burned the deck if he could have lifted it! We had flames jumping 5 feet out of the barrel.

Last night, with the help of our neighbor and her chainsaw, and my chainsaw which wasn't working very smoothly, we cut up a tree that the utility linemen cut down for us. It was a 40' evergreen that was dirty and annoying...a very pretty tree...in someone else's yard. Maxim and Brecken hauled branches for 2 hours...without complaining! In fact, they asked to help...I'm not sure if they are my kids. By the end of it we had a huge pile of branches that they were jumping into and crawling through.

8pm rolled around and they ate like rabid wolves, then took baths and both went to bed without incident...which never happens in our home.

Thank God for spring!