The boys sit around the kitchen table, happily munching on cold cereal.

“Hey, Will,” Sam asks around a mouthful of Lucky Charms, “what kind of cereal do you have?”

“Frosty Plates,” Will replies, still crunching.

“Nooo,” Sam says thoughtfully, “Those look like Pops.”

“Well, they crunch like Frosty Plates and they taste like Frosty Plates.”

“Dad! Do WillWill have Frosty Plates or Pops?” Sam challenges

Jason, up to this point attempting his impression of Switzerland, is forced to pick a side. “He actually does have Frosted Flakes, Sam.”

Sam’s face smooths and cools to marble. He spoons another bite of his cereal toward his mouth, making careful eye contact with Will as he does so. Then, just before it reaches his lips, he mouths silently for Will’s benefit alone, *Pops.*

I think we all know who’s won this battle.

“Hey, WillWill.”

Will looks up from the Bakugan he’s been struggling to shape into a perfect sphere. “What?”

“You wanna play hide and seek?” Sam asks, certain there’s never been a better idea in the entire history of the world.

“Yeah!” Will shouts as he scrambles up from the kitchen floor. They both race into the kitchen powder room, the clatter of cowboy boots on the tile a deafening roar.

I keep one eye on the egg I’m frying and the other on their progress. It’s a tiny room, hardly 5′ x 5′, and I wonder just how well a game of hide and seek can be accomplished in such confines.

“I’ll be the counting guy!” Will shouts triumphantly. Or perhaps he isn’t shouting. It’s hard to tell as Will seems to try and make up for his tiny stature by always speaking as loudly as possible. Sam acquiesces happily, and takes up his place between the toilet and the wall.

“Ready?” Will asks.

“Yup,” Sam nods.

Will steps outside the door and places his face in a nearby corner. “One…two…three…” He makes it to eight before shouting, “Ready or not, here I come!” Two steps later he stands in front of Sam. “Ha! Ha! I found you!” They both break into happy giggles.

“My turn!” Sam says, overjoyed by how well his plan is working.

He  and Will exchange places by the toilet. “You ready?” he asks.

“Uh-huh. You be the counting guy now.”

Sam takes two steps, places his face in the corner, and proceeds to count all the way to 10 before “finding” Will. They repeat the process no less than six times. The uproarious giggling is undiminished by familiarity.

And then the moment passes. Will thinks of a new game to play in another room, and they gallop off to find Tom. I remember my egg, and turn my focus to breakfast.

But my thoughts keep circling back to two little boys and the tremendous amount of fun that was hiding in plain sight. I think I could learn something here.

“It’s rather easy to be busy…. [When some people] unnecessarily complicate their lives, they often feel increased frustration, diminished joy, and too little sense of meaning in their lives….Leonardo Divinci is quoted as saying, ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.’”

~Quote from Dieter F. Uchtdorf, courtesy of this wonderful blog that you really should check out sooner rather than later.

I’m sure the peach chutney I had planned to pair with my asian inspired pork tenderloin would have been awesome…had my dried peaches not expired in September of 2009. Sure I found them in the back of the cabinet, and it was a last minute “Aha!” sort of dinner addition. And thankfully I realized it the minute I tore open the bag (picture shriveled, black, mummified lumps). But my trying to shift gears on the fly and transform the already simmering ingredients into apple chutney (the only other fruit besides grapes and bananas I had on hand) just made a bad situation worse. Oddly, it was probably my trying to sub (way too much) cloves for the star anise that really ruined it. But in the end, there were just too many suspects to single out one culprit.

Why can’t take out be low-fat, high in fiber and teach my kids to love vegetables?

Scene: Friday Night. Our heroes are enjoying a bit of dinner while discussing the likely culprit behind the small, melted, plastic toy that has just been discovered in the oven.

Jack chooses a direct approach. “Will, you did it didn’t you?”

“Nuh-uh,” Will shouts, struggling to hold an appropriately scandalized look on his face. “Did not!”

“Well, it was your Bakugan,” Jack insists. “So you must have put it in there!”

Will’s protests mix and meld with Jack’s continued accusations. Tom studiously stirs the caramel sauce meant for his apple fries into the adjacent sweet and sour sauce with the tip of his index finger. He takes an experimental lick and smiles in satisfaction. His culinary experimentation rendering him insensible to the escalating storm around him.

But Sam…Sam is growing steadily more irate. His gaze bounces back and forth from Jack to Will and his dinner is virtually forgotten. Finally, he blurts out, “The wind did it!!”

Jack and Will, caught between volleys, stop and stare for a beat. Jack recovers the fastest.

“Sam, there is no way the wind blew the Bakugan into the oven.” With logic that would leave Sam Spade breathless, Jack proceeds to point out the physical impossibility of this scenario — detailing everything from the difficulty of opening the oven door to the clear absence of wind in our kitchen. It’s an impressive display, but Sam is only galvanized to greater eloquence.

“No! The wind did it, and you’re just a…a jerk!” Sam delivers this bomb half standing in by his chair, stubby index finger serving as punctuation for that last, devastating blow.

“Mom!!” Jack yells.

With my face turned to the wall, and doing the best I could to steady my voice, I reminded Sam we don’t call people jerks. But if you could have seen him, people — defending his brother to the bitter end when everyone else in the room had already pronounced him guilty — I think you’d have felt the quick rush of pride that I did.

Mommy can’t be there to fight every battle, so it’s good to know these boys can take care of each other.

…the bedtime crazies are made just a bit more so by the addition of a turtle. This one took the form of Tom wearing a clothes basket over his head. He insisted on brushing his teeth (in our teensy tiny downstairs bath) while wearing it, and would have slept with it if I had given the o.k. Only as I’m writing this, did it dawn on me that a photo would be nice. I seriously must have some sort of shutter phobia. Sorry world!

“Are you sure these are nachos?” Jack questioned, turning his plate around and leaning in to observe at eye level the tortilla chips topped with a stingy smattering of shredded cheese.

“Yup,” I replied slamming the microwave door shut. “Nachos.”

Jack was unconvinced. “It sure doesn’t look like nachos,” he insisted, poking gingerly at the dish’s edge as if expecting retaliation.

“Well…it’s what your nachos look like, so just eat it.”

Of all the tasks of motherhood, I find short-order cook the most challenging.