Not your ordinary boys

So I made a big batch of orange marmalade today.

Why, you may ask? Two reasons- first my husband is half-British and is in love with the stuff and second, we bought a 25 pound box of oranges from a roadside stand on our way back from Florida. These hands can only handle so much orange peeling before the citric acid starts eating away my fingernails.
Unfortunately, today decided to be the hottest day we have had yet this year and our AC isn't functioning so well. The marmalade making made the kitchen extra cozy, which in turn made me grumpy, which led me to usher all of my boys outside to play so I could sweat in peace.
There are days when I simply can't get my boys to play outside. I always thought boys just lived outdoors and I would have to be yelling from my front porch half the day to get them to come in. Granted it was hot outside, so the third time they came in whining, I got their swim trunks on and set up a sprinkler. I even ran through it a few times to show them how fun it was. They didn't buy it. They were all knocking on the door, begging to be let in while the sprinkler sprinkled merrily all by itself. I told them they had to stay outside just a few more minutes- gave them all full permission to have a waterfight or make as many mud pies as they wanted. Still knocking. Then James had the brilliant idea to sneak in the back door.
"All right", I said. "If you want to be inside, you have to clean." (Ha Ha, sneaky mom wins, right?)
His response was "I would love to do that mom." And he did. He cleaned up his bedroom, even vacuuming it, and then I came into my room and found this.


"I thought these looked better like this than on the floor mom."

By then his brothers had found the back door too, and were wanting to know what they could clean. I was running out of stuff by this time, so I told them if they wanted to be inside they had to play in their bedroom with the door shut.
This they did for five minutes or so, until I heard crying- and I mean really heartbroken, end of the world crying, so I went to check.
I found Etienne sobbing away, while James was obviously holding something in his fist that couldn't be seen. I asked him what he had done to Etienne. He admitted to doing something to him. When asked what it was, he opened his hand. It was empty. I asked again what he had done and again he showed me his hand, cupping it as if he were actually holding something. I looked to Etienne for clarification, and he was pointing at James's hand too, but crying too hard to talk. James then explained that he had been making pretend sandwiches for his brothers, but that Etienne was copying him. He didn't want Etienne making sandwiches too, but since he wouldn't stop, he insisted that Etienne had to put pepper on them just like him. Etienne didn't want to put pepper on his pretend sandwich, but James was making him do it anyway. That is when the crying started. What James was "holding" was a pretend pepper shaker. !!!!????
At that point it was dinner time, so we forgot about pepper sandwiches and hunkered down for some gourmet buttered noodles with leftover broccoli (Steve was not home).
After dessert of a piece of 85% cocoa dark chocolate (my boys won't eat milk chocolate. What in the world?) I sat down to play the piano for awhile. I noticed it was strangely quiet, and I also noticed it was bedtime. I went to their room to tell them it was jammie time, but they weren't there. I opened the front door and lo and behold, there they were having a grand old time. And then the inevitable- "Don't make us come in mom, we are having a waterfight!"

Where do these people come from? Maybe from a mother who is silly enough to make orange marmalade on a 95 degree day. Who knows.