An afternoon with friends

We spent an afternoon with 2 friends over for the boys to play with. I made every attempt to not let them get glued to the wii. They did a bike ride (the afternoon was lovely!). I made a couple of them walk the dog. There was baking/decorating. There was a ping pong game that didn't last long. I had to smile at the kid who had 'wicked skills' (which he kept reminding everyone of in loud volume) at the mario game he brought over, but couldn't really hit the ping pong ball to save his life. I guess ping pong is old school. But whatever happened to video games being so good for the old hand/eye coordination?

Anyhoo (as my 21 yr old niece would and does say several times in each of her emails home from her mission), another old-school thing of me- it's anyhow HOW. Geez I must be cranky! It was, like I said an afternoon with friends. E had a friend and so did N. E's friend was a very cordial boy who we have been getting to know better and better, and each time he comes over I have to say I like him more each time. He really knows how to converse with the adults around him. He is polite and asks first before taking food out of the kitchen up to the playroom, which normally I don't let my kids do, but since it was St Nick, I found myself not even batting an eye before I agreed to his request. Did I mention I also let him make a giant sugar cookie and completely mess up the kitchen in the decorating process? Normally this would drive me a tinsie bit coo coo, but not with ole St Nick.

Now moving on to friend #2 who I will call "No" (short for his real name btw-and befitting of his personality). No rings the doorbell and I open it all friendly like thanking him for coming over and he's like 'sure- your welcome.' Kinda odd no? I mean "kinda odd No- what you should have said was thanks for having me- that is the standard polite response." Now this was only one of the many fairly odd bordering on rude things he said to me in the coarse of the 4 hours he spent at my house with no call whatsoever from his former homeschool mom mentioned in my blog previously here. So I can understand where he is getting his serious lack of human relation skills. I overlooked it when he was completely talking over everyone and asking N if his mom was going to feed them, and not thanking me when I did. But when he left I sorta felt like I'd been used by someone- probably his mother. I will continue to give No a chance because he is just a 14 year old kid, but the minute my kid starts acting like this something's gotta change. I found it interesting that when I mentioned the poor manners to my own son after his buddy had left (at our request btw), that he got very defensive. I could almost recall my own words to my mother about 28 years ago "you can't choose my friends for me!" This is very true, but I can certainly point out when friends behave badly, and "As long as you live under my roof...." (did I just say that!?)