A mother of brothers

I wrote this post a few weeks before we left Turkey but am just getting around to posting it now. Thus you will see references to things (like a grill, a broom, a propane tank, bikes) that we don't have ... yet. Our UB (unaccompanied baggage) got here on Friday. You are allowed 1,000 pounds so we had put in all of our kitchen stuff and some odds and ends. No word yet on when our "BIG" shipment gets here but being as we are in a basically furnished house, it really is not that big of a deal.

Just in the last week, I have been reminded, repeatedly, that I am the mother of boys. I am told this when I share stories of things my boys have done.

For instance:

I walked outside to find them, mop in one set of hands. Broom in another set of hands. Swinging away. Swinging at what? Nothing major. They were just trying to knock the propane tanks from John's grill off the porch.

But wait. I have another.

Isaac wanted to unlock the gate. I think he wanted his bike out of the front yard. So instead of coming inside the house and asking me ... instead of going through the house to get his bike ... he climbed up the fence. His little four-year-old feet were perched in the square rungs of the wooden gate, and he was feverishly working the lock when I came outside to bring them a drink.

Elijah was cheering him on, directing him. Seriously. And while Scrubby can't talk, I'm pretty sure he was cheering him on too. "Yeah. Open that gate. I'd really like to go on an adventure around the Base. It's been a few weeks since I've snuck out."

Another? Okay.

John had an old wooden garden table outside. We didn't have the movers take it. It was a quick project that was just going to be trashed when we left. The table was designed to have pots on it. Not an Elijah. So needless to say I wasn't that surprised when I approached the sliding glass door to see Elijah falling through the table, Isaac with some sort of make-shift sword, standing nearby. Forty-five pounds will do that to a wooden garden table.

JB tells me that this is just the beginning of brothers. JB has three brothers, but it was his brother Ray, two years his junior, that he found the most mischief with. His mother recalled for me one story that really illustrated the life of a mother of brothers

JB and Ray were in high school. Going thru typical teenage brother stuff. They were rough-housing all the time and occasionally crossing the line where I would yell at them to knock it off. So, one day they were in the kitchen and I was in the living room and they hatched a scheme to play a joke on me. They started fighting -- verbally -- then it escalated to where it sounded like it was getting out of hand. All of a sudden Ray came stumbling out of the kitchen literally clutching his chest-holding onto a bloody knife that was really ketchup! I jumped up and started screaming. John tells me I stiff-armed him out of the way to get to Ray only to find the ketchup and the joke when I got closer. I didn't find it nearly as funny as they did.

I suppose that I am just touching the surface? Please share your own stories in the comments -- either from your own adventures with a sibling or the adventures of your children!