No, mom. We just made up a game.

This week's theme is made-up games. I LOVE THIS. I love imagination, and thought, and games, and my boys. The first game is "Mining" like mining for coal. Daniel has carried around the black spongey, stalagtite thingie from my MacBook packaging since I got it, like months ago. Recently, he's been calling it 'dirt'... as in "Where should I put my dirt mom?" as he's cleaning up his toys. But, it's got some cool features, like little depressions for small things. Years and years ago he begged me for a dollar store item that were some plastic rectangle beads in a triangle package. They're yellow, blue, green and red, I think. When Matthew tried to eat them, I put them up and away, they've just resurfaced this week... and until the dog arrives on Saturday I suspect we won't have any more eating the beads issues.

These two items, the beads and the 'dirt' make up the Mining game. I don't know all the rules (hello! I wasn't invited to play...) but I do know that some beads have value, and some beads are bombs... and there hasn't been a knock-down-drag-out fight over Mining... a miracle in and of itself.

This is also the summer of Silly Bands. If you don't have children, but you grew up in the 80's - think the next generation of jelly bracelets. They're rubber bands formed into different shapes. I've not seen the 'originals' but our current collection consists of sports, christmas, bunnies, some sparkley ones that were 'traded' and most recently toy story and spiderman. (secretly, they're pretty cool, and I'da died for them at their age). Today Matthew had at least 50 on his 4-inch arm. Tonight, they both found as many as they could, and went outside. (apparently, you only wear them on one arm... or so they tell me) I watched out the window for a while, and when they came in I said "What were you battling? Pokemon? (heads shake no) Dragons? (no) Transformers? (no) I got it! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! No, mom. We just made up a game, and the silly bands give us special powers (OMG! I'm almost fainting) and we can defeat monsters, and enemies and all sorts of bad guys. NICE! Now I really want some! I'd be totally un-cool and wear them on BOTH wrists... because in my head I'd totally be Wonder Woman.