All in 120 seconds

That's all it took. 120 seconds. Even at the age of 12 and 9 these boys can get into trouble in nothing flat. Let me paint the picture:

A few weeks ago, it had been a long Sunday with friends over, so when it was time to go grocery shopping, the thought of leaving the boys at home and only going with Nate sounded refreshing. Quiet adult time with the husband. We've left the boys home alone quite often. Maysen is generally in charge but usually the boys are playing XBox or watching videos. Pretty low-risk things. They know not to answer the door or allow friends in when we're gone.

The same warnings were given and off we went! We decided that we'd grab the mail, as I was expecting a few things in the mail. Considering most of our bills are online and long-gone are the days of letter-writing, I can honestly say that we get the mail about every 1-2 weeks or unless we're expecting something. Needless to say, our mail hauls are pretty big.

Our mail box to our little neighborhood is a few streets away (at the top of our loop). After seeing how large our bundle was, we decided to run it home instead of hauling it around with us. We headed for home; down the hill, around the corner. I wasn't prepared for what I saw.

You see, it had been a mere (approximately) 120 seconds from the time we left our angels and headed out. Running around the yard with no shoes was Griffin. He was crying and running from the garage to the front door. Maysen had locked him out of the house. Confused, we stopped the car and all we could understand from Griffin was "Locked out. Maysen. Jerk."

I entered the house and the confusion just got worse. There, on the floor, were ice cubes. Everywhere. I entered a little further. A second culprit had no entered the scene making it only more confusing. Sidewalk chalk. In places where there wasn't ice, there were hunks of side walk chalk (I had brought in for drawing on my welcoming board).

That's right. In 120 seconds, they entered the house and the story goes like this:

Griffin: "Maysen was walking up the stairs so I jumped on his back."

Maysen: "Yeah, and it P'd me off, so I ran to the ice maker and grabbed a handful of ice and threw it at him."

Griffin: "But I cound't get any ice to throw back so I just grabbed the sidewalk chalk and started throwing it until I ran out. Then I ran outside and MAYSEN locked me outside."

That's all it took folks. 120 seconds. And instead of my nice, quiet, grocery trip with Nate, both boys had to grab shoes and hike it to the store. Then I made them go searching for item by item at the store.

UPDATE: I've sat this post out for about a week waiting to finish it's beauty and let me clue you into a nice little added bonus to this fun loving family. Now, mind you, they didn't get away "cheap" from the last incident. I even threatened hiring a neighborhood girl (who is Griffin's age) to come and babysit them while we left. That was only a threat.

So, last night we decided to try it again. We had left Griffin home for about 1.5hrs while we were at a athletic parent meeting at the school and he did just great. After the meeting, we took Maysen home, dropped him off and ran to Cottage Grove.

We were gone an hour.

We arrived home and everything looks great - there is no blood. No missing teeth. No broken windows or broken down door. Even a cheerful "Hi mom!" when we entered. Then I go to set my purse down on the counter and I am puzzled because on top of our black counter top I could see a blue'ish sticky slimy substance.

"What is this blue goo on the counter right here?"

*Deer in headlights* all movement stops. Then they look at each other.

"Before you start coming up with some bullcrap, I just want the truth .... NOW."

"Ohhhhh, it's this ..." Maysen walks over to the freezer and pulls out my huge meant-for-back ice pack. You know the ones that are filled with blue gel? Yup. Well, this giant gel-filled ice pack had a split down one whole edge.

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

"What happened to that, Maysen?"

Story 1: His back hurt so he put the ice pack on the couch and it popped open.

Story 2: GRIFFIN decided it might be fun to throw the ice packs up in the air and see if they could hit the fan. Griffin was too scared to do it, so Maysen thought he'd be the brave one and try. Of course - the repeated heaving of the ice pack up into the air trying to strike the circulating ceiling fan was enough to break it wide open. They cleaned up the evidence ... but not good enough, leaving blue slime in a spot easily visible to the M.O.M.