Preparing for a long cold winter

Today I decided that I would work on splitting some more of the wood I had in the side yard. Ariel had the day off from school to go to an all day event with some friends so I decided that Alex could have the day off too. I would rather look at it as he was out of the class room and learning one of life's important lessons - how to put in a hard day's work and embrace the challenges of becoming a man. Well maybe splitting wood doesn't really make you a man but it can teach you a life skill that will be used to keep your family warm in the future and it can always be used as part of obtaining the required credit in PE!

When I was a kid I can remember my father getting a big tri-axle of logs dropped off at the house every year for my brother and I to split. And we did it the hard way with an maul no gas powered machines to aid in our chores. I admit I was younger and didn't really do a lot of the splitting I did most of the moving and stacking of the logs. I of course was also the one who was responsible to get the wood down stairs and stacked on the far wall so there was never a shortage to be fed into our stove.

Now as much as I love splitting wood by hand there was way too much for me to do in one week without cutting into my hunting time so Uncle Tony made it easier on my by letting me borrow his log splitter again.

At first Alex was less than thrilled to be spending his morning performing physical labor but once we got going he cheered right up and we got into a steady rhythm taking turns running the machine and placing the logs. Before I knew it the pile of split wood was growing and the whole log pile was shrinking at a steady pace.

I realize that this next part may cause some controversy but I can remember getting a forbidden treat once in a while growing up such as nip of blackberry brandy at breakfast after a cold morning spent in the woods bow hunting or one of Aunt Concetta's flammable rum balls at Christmas. While I may not have benefited me in any way it sure didn't cause me any harm. This is the same reasoning that I used today when I let Alex have an ice cold Monster Energy drink. As you can imagine he ran up the back stairs to get us each one and partook of it throughout the morning and early afternoon, savoring each tasty sip!

I must admit Alex surprised me today. He really stepped up to the plate and showed me that he is willing to work hard and actually requested that we keep going until all the wood was split. He worked hard loading the truck when we picked up and moved the wood and like a champ assisted with stacking the first cord and a half several weeks ago and proved to me again today that he wasn't afraid of a little hard work. I am proud of my children but today was special in that I watched my son act like an adult and was rewarded with a sense of accomplishment when all the wood was done.

Thankfully we have 4 cord of split wood for the winter ahead, hopefully Gabriel will allow us to use it considering he claimed it as his own before we could finish!

Next week I just might give the kids another day off from the classroom to teach them about stacking wood which of course can be turned into a math lesson about how much wood is in a cord, or the science of proper stacking and defeating the powers of gravity! Plus stacking wood and drinking Monsters beats running laps around the soccer field any day!