High Adventure and a War

My two oldest boys are away at another scout outing called high adventure.  I dropped them off Wednesday morning an during the next hour they texted me twice asking me to bring them their tent and their tinfoil dinners.  My husband joined them last night just in time to see my son come home from a local hospital high adventure where he got 4 stitches in his knee due to some monkeying around on the dock and falling in the water onto an unseen rock.  At last year's high adventure  Big Boy brought home a blistering sunburn over the entire upper half of his body.  The boy is dangerous to himself and others at high adventure camp.  We, however have had an abundance of peace without our older boys around.

It always amazes me how dynamics of a family change when just one person is out of the picture.  Little Boy is now the head hancho around these parts, and he has been hanging with his sisters playing with them in ways he would never allow to be seen by his older brothers.  Yes I have seen him hanging out at the Barbie house introducing the dolls to some Ninja moves, but none-the-less "playing Barbie."  The girls were putty in his 11 year old hands.  He was also very sweet playing with Baby Girl in the pool tonight letting her throw a sinking toy for him to dive for repeatedly.  I actually got to read a book he was so entertaining.

One thing I have been able to introduce (due to summer boredom) lately is the game of war.  It's a game that is fun for all ages.  It has a mean, yet exciting name making boys want to play.  We've brought our cards to the pool to play during thunder warning time.  Today I was playing with Big Girl and she added a new element to the game.  Because even though war sounds exciting it can be a bit tedious.  She's combined the moment of slapping the cards with a ritualistic shouting of whatever comes to mind.  It's like turrets-syndrome-style war.  My favorite thing to shout is "Shaka phooey!" from the movie Kung Fu Panda.  She shouts out all kind of gibberish.   It hilarious until it becomes annoying.  Then I've been known to suggest taking turns with our shout outs but she can't seem to hold herself back.

Tonight as we played the game would JUST. NOT. END.  I was down to like 10 cards and thought surely any moment I would be a gonner, but I had two high cards that kept saving me at just the right moment giving me more cards.  Then I would lose a war and my spirits would soar.  Once I set myself up to lose during a war on purpose just to put my poor tired soldiers to rest in her POW stack of captured cards.  We finally got to the point where I didn't have enough cards for a stack up during a war and I proclaimed her the winner.  She kindly offered to give me the two extra cards I needed.  I did the honorable thing.  I sent up the white flag and surrendered.