Hanna Fun

I'm going to try to give you an idea of what boys think is a good idea of activity on a hurricane day. I've known for as long as I can remember that boys are different than girls, but raising a son has highlighted this fact that those of you gals with brothers already knew, I'm sure.

Anyway, the following video -- if this works -- was taken a few minutes ago. Please ignore the mess in the garage, and remember we live close to sea level. There are no basements to store stuff here or to send crazy kids to. Boy do I miss a basement, but that's another story.

For those of you that don't know, those are plasma cars. (You don't pedal or push yourself along. Somehow you move that steering wheel back and forth to move the car.) Ann Bennett won the first one a couple years ago, and the big guys loved it so much that Bryant asked for one last year for Christmas. In this video, Bryant and Ward are racing. Robert and Tanner are chasing them, but what they want to be doing is rolling/throwing baseballs at Bryant and Ward to knock them off or at least pushing a skateboard in their path. I drew the line at those ideas. The contraption in the middle of the garage is to practice hitting. Notice Ann Bennett just stands in the middle and watches the madness! After this, they went outside to play football. Robert, Tanner and Bryant are in 6th, 5th and 4th grade and play together most days. Ward is Robert's older brother (in HS) who sometimes comes and plays with them. They LOVE it and so do I. He can't be convinced to hang with them as much now, but when he does, I feel a little better. He sort of makes sure they don't kill each other in football or whatever adventure they create, but he is fun in the way only an older guy can be.

So, the point is, you moms of preschoolers still have a lot of years of extra activity ahead of you. Invest in lots of items to expend energy. You still have years to use them. I'm sure all of these boys are over the age the plasma car is marketed to, but they still seem to find ways to use them. If we didn't have lots of stuff to play with outside, they'd be inside playing x-box or wii or watching tv. At least this way they're being active and creative.