There is never a dull moment around this house. With three boys between the ages of 8 and 16, the dull moments went by the wayside a long time ago. With the youngest two boys, the dull moments just keep getting further and further away. They keep you on your toes and keep you just a laugh away from peeing your pants. I can honestly say that because I have had surgery to prevent that and I still find myself in some close calls. Hey, the surgery was effective…enough…but when you have these two around you can just laugh and laugh and they will keep it going for you. So be warned.
I was not expecting what I was about to see…really I was not.
A while back I had pulled the large green exercise ball out of the closet under the stairs. It needed to find a new home. I cleaned out the closet and rearranged things in there for two reasons. First, the camping buckets needed a home. I was tired of seeing them moved from one place to another in the house. Mostly, I wanted them out of the room that I had my sewing stuff in as they were taking up space. Second, I was determined that this year the Christmas tree was actually leaving the living room. Let me just state that it does come down, but there is no real place to store it so it hangs out, mostly hidden in the living room. I did not want the Christmas tree hidden in the corner of my living room this year. As a result of these two conditions something was going to have to change and that closet was the likely target. That big green exercise ball was something that was lost (well conveniently forgotten about) and found in there. I sent it upstairs figuring that the kids would enjoy the new find. They enjoyed it a bit too much when they were younger, hence why it was in the closet in the first place. This was just a few days ago…
I look up and this is what I see…
Lance is blowing up the big green exercise ball. When it was sent upstairs to its new home, it was mostly inflated. It was a little soft but it was for the most part still fully inflated. You certainly were not wondering if it was round when it last left the ground floor. To see this child huff and puff and try to blow up this large ball was quite the sight.
Lance taking a break and trying to look cool. He tried to convince me that he did not need to blow it all the way up. I think he was just running out of “breaths” to blow it up with. Light headed, much?!
Notice that Lance was not making much progress on blowing the ball up? It is a big ball. He is a little body. He was really determined.
Lance really getting his face into it. At one point he had his entire face buried in the ball blowing with all the wind his little lungs could muster. It did not improve his chances of blowing up the ball much. He was still making slow progress.
Then they moved on to a little smarter method? I am not entirely sure. The sounds the thing was making were not so fun to listen to. Lance got the balloon pump to “pump up” the ball. Resourceful. Kyle was trying to pump it up without it making horrible screeching noises. After oiling the post on the pump and figuring out that if you did it really slowly, it did make less noise. It does not, however, appear to be making any more progress in getting that ball re-inflated.
Eventually, they decided that the balloon pump was not sufficient for their needs. They moved on to something a little bigger. They went out to the garage and dug the pump for the air mattresses out of the bucket of air mattresses. Like I said, they are quite resourceful. It appears that they are making much better progress here.
Lance was determined to get the ball fully inflated. He kept pumping and pumping.
Lance and Kyle decided that pumping up the ball was pretty slow work. Lance just kept pumping and pumping.
Once they finally got it fully inflated, they were going to have to put the plug back into the hole that the pump was in. The catch? The hole was not exactly small. I am not exactly sure who designed that, but you pull the pump out and you lost air almost immediately. It took them a couple of tries before they got it plugged without losing too much air in the process.
The truly sad part? That ball that went upstairs, came downstairs with 4 little holes in it. I am not entirely sure what they did to it while it was upstairs for less than a week, but it is no longer a problem in the house thanks to those 4 tiny holes. All that work to get it aired up and just a couple of short hours later it was flat on the bottom again and still losing air. Oh well, it hit the trash. Watching the kids work to get the ball inflated was funny enough and worth the time spent in the process.
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