Spiky Balls

We love having the woods in our backyard . . . most of the year. The trees are beautiful to look at, fun to explore and wonderful to listen to in the spring when the birds come back home. My least favorite thing about the woods, however, are the "spiky balls" that fall at the end of winter.

These things drive me crazy. If we don't get them all picked up, little trees start to grow in our lawn during the summer and, of course, it is no fun finding them with your bare feet either. I am fortunate though. I have a secret weapon . . . five boys who love to play video games. We are usually pretty stingy with the boys when it comes to the amount of time they are allowed to play video games.

Today, however, I pulled out the secret weapon as we were making breakfast. I told the boys that they could earn one hour of video game time for every plastic grocery bag of spiky balls that they picked up. It took Tanner about five seconds to get his shoes, hat, gloves and a grocery bag. He was out the door in a flash. Before breakfast was ready, he had already filled up one entire bag. It didn't take long after Kaden and Trevor joined in for all of the spiky balls in the entire yard to completely disappear. There are a lot of far more important reasons that I love having five boys; however, disappearing spiky balls is one of the small reasons that having five little boys gives me great pleasure.