Saturday, April 2, 2016

April Fools

My kids really enjoy April Fool's Day.  They love the idea of a holiday dedicated to pranks.  
 Noah's idea was to wire Sarah's door with explosives.  When she came out of her room in the morning, I heard a bang and smelled smoke.  Sarah was completely unfazed and said, "Huh. Nice try."  She said she knew something was up because her door was closed, and she sleeps with it open.  The cats, however were terrified.  Marty had been shut in Sarah's room, so she was right at ground zero when the explosion occurred.  Shiloh was in the living room, but she immediately puffed into a fluffball and slunk under the chair.
Sarah plotted her revenge before she even ate breakfast. She taped plastic wrap across Noah's doorway so he would smack into it when he came stumbling out in his sleepy morning state.  Sarah and I positioned ourselves outside his door with our cameras rolling, and I called to Noah that it was time to get up and start school.  He mumbled, "Ok, I'm coming."  We heard him shuffling around, getting dressed, pulling up his blinds, etc.  Then all was quiet.  Sarah whispered, "Did he go back to bed?"  Suddenly the door from the garage to the kitchen opened, and Noah called, "Good morning, everyone!"  He had jumped out his window, ran around the house, dug up the spare key, and come in through the garage!  Sarah and I were standing in the smoky hall with our cameras pointed at Noah's door, totally shocked.  Even Sarah gave him a high five for that one. The best prank of the day.

Mike got us all.  I always write our schedule for the day on the white board in the school room, and sometimes Mike will add something to it.  On this day, he had written a ridiculously long list of chores, including vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom, mowing, and lots more.  I thought, "How am I going to enforce all that? Plus, it's raining, so how is Noah going to mow?  And the grass doesn't even need mowing..."  Then I saw that he had written in red, "See bulletin board for the rest of the list."  I looked at the bulletin board and saw a piece of paper that said "The list" on it.  I turned it over and saw "April Fool!"  Whew. Sarah was fooled for a second, but then she realized that no human could possibly do everything on that list and figured out it was a prank. When Noah saw it, he was just plain angry.  His voice cracked and went up an octave as he fumed, "What?!  I just mowed two days ago!" and stomped over to the window to look at the short grass.  He laughed when he read the rest of the list on the bulletin board and got the joke.
Other minor pranks included Noah mixing Cheerios in with Mike's precious Lucky Charms and Sarah taping paper over my mouse sensor so my mouse wouldn't work.  I didn't prank anyone.

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