I have had my fill of testosterone today.

Mario played his flag football game at 10:30 this morning. Patty and Joe came to watch the little guy and they brought mega luck with them because Mario played his best game ever. He pulled off three flags – he has never pulled off any in previous games. He was charged up pumping his fist in the air and making sure that the crowd watched him. Show off!

After football, we picked up Mario’s cousin, Giovanni, and headed to Darby Creek to take a hike. They were cracking me up the entire time. Mario wanted to take the off-road trails because “we needed to face danger.” They talked amongst themselves about finding snakes and toads. And about ten seconds later, they walked right over one. I stopped in my tracks and yelled “snake!” They ran back and another kid close by picked it up for us.

We continued along the trail and hit a most amazing clearing where the creek flowed more rapidly over giant stones and the sun filtered in to add a soft glow. The boys amazed me when they stopped in their tracks and proclaimed “take a picture – it’s beautiful!” We walked down to the edge of the creek and threw stones into the water. This led to the boys stepping on stones in the water to throw smaller stones. This led to the boys stepping into the water and getting their shoes wet. This led to taking their shoes off and wading in the water. This led to the boys falling in the water and getting their clothes wet. And this led to much laughter.

The boys played in the creek for a long time but Mario finally called it quits because he didn’t like being wet. We got home and the boys ran upstairs. I put down my stuff and went up to tell them they needed a bath but when I got up there, I found two naked boys already running around like tribal warriors. I turned on the bath water and listened to them fight dinosaurs and superheroes.

Boys.