Punk Kids!

Punk KIDS! That's all I can say. Well, not really then what kind of blog would this be? One thing i love about military is that when people move they give stuff away that they don't want to pack along. You can get some really good stuff that way. So, my kids were given a cute Little Tikes log cabin playhouse. We placed it at the bottom of the hill on the edge of the woods behind our house. We even found an old section of wood fencing to place under it for a floor. Now they could play Laura Ingalls in Little House in the Big Woods. They and their friends have had fun playing with this. Well, last fall, while my DH was TDY, it was stolen. YES, a large kids playhouse, gone. We hiked through the woods, found it and drug it back home. No problems, I just knocked on the door of the home we were behind and explained why I was in their backyard and went on.
Then Sunday (hubby TDY again) I look out my son's window and....NO PLAYHOUSE. I was so MAD. I thought about calling the MP's but, I didn't have time to wait, because we had AWANA, so i called hubby to complain and practiced slow breathing and decided like Scarlett.. I'd deal with it tomorrow. Well, now, or yesterday, umm.. Anyhow after our morning meeting i decided to drive the neighborhood and check out the yards on the other side of the woods. When what do I spy, hidden back in the woods. A large Blue thing, with a very familiar Green roof. What to do? Do I bang on every door on the street asking whose kids did it? Try to drag it out now? Well, again, after practiced breathing I decided to go home and we'd hike into the woods and assess the situation. Now mind you it's below freezing and I am not a cold weather outside fun girl. So, K, J,(also mad that their house is gone) and I hike with me and we discover the house, the thieves had cleverly covered the entire house in a blue tarp and used the roof to secure the tarp in place, thus insulating and disguising their hide out. They had also pinned a blanket in the door way. I wish I had taken pictures, they had gotten this house over fallen logs and a "creek" and set it securely between several fallen logs. Well, I'm not going to let a little thing like dense underbrush stop me. So, we pull the roof off and carry it home. I'm still quite warm (bloodpressures up I suppose) but the wimps, I mean kids need to get warm and eat lunch. So we go in for a bit. Now I knew the weather report was calling for snow and I didn't trust that the little punks that took this wouldn't move it again, once they discovered their hideout had been compromised. So I grabbed the older boys and we headed out on our mission to reclaim our property. While warming up, my brain had unfrozen, and I decided that we would place the cabin on top of the theives tarp to drag the darn thing home, because I couldn't get the walls to disassembe earlier. Fortunately with out the roof it lightened up a bit. So after positioning the cabin we began the drive home. It worked suprisingly well. I pulled and the boys pushed. Once we got a rhythm down we were able to move surprisingly smoothly until I realized we had followed the path to the wrong crossing on he creek. So a little turn and we found a narrow portion.
Then once across the creek the tarp started shredding from the sticker bushes. We kept pulling and shoving trying to keep the thing together until it becam a bigger hindrance than a help. We stopped to reassess the situation, we were about 2/3 of the way home, it was now starting to snow, and we saw and heard a group of kids on the edge of the woods. Were they our thieves we pondered, only God knows. We decided to push on without the tarp. I'd pull using the window shutters and the boys would continue to push. This actually seemed to work even easier than using the tarp, I was starting to see that some motivated kids could get this through the woods. Only two more obstacles and we were home. A huge pile of decaying branches from a tree that had fallen the previous year and "the hill" a 65 degree incline that separated our house from the woods. J and I managed quite handly to navigate the fallen trees, but I wasn't so sure about the hill, which now had about an inch of snow on it. K came to our rescue, they pushed and I pulled, and we cheered each other on to the top of our mount everest. Only to realize, it wouldn't fit through the fence gate, because, now this baby was going in the yard! No more hikes for homes for this girl! And once again J helped me out. We flipped the house on the side, balanced it on the fence rail and passed I held it while he ran around to help his sister and they lowered it to the other side!
VICTORY was ours! I must say that it was a proud moment for us and I dare say one that will live in our memories. I just wish that I could have seen us dragging that thing through the woods. I hope God let's us watch video of our goofier moments in heaven.
But, now I'm paying the price as this very out of shape body is aching from it's work out, DH warned me this would happen should I actually start doing real exercise. I guess my only hope now is to keep exercising, that or popping ibuprofens. I tried the hot bath thing only to discover my drain doesn't seal and my tub won't hold more than 3 inches of water with the faucet running full strength. But, I'll leave that fix to maintenance. At least for today I'm a hero, and the kids and the dog now have a shelter in our back yard And I will go to sleep knowing the punk kids didn't win this round and praying they won't start another one!