Eating us out of house and home--and devious children

I probably grumble about this a lot, and I know so many people that have gone through the same thing, but feeding teenage boys is getting really expensive! The other day a loaf of bread disappeared after dinner and one of the boys tells me he needed a snack so he ate 14 pieces of bread. They constantly make pb and js after dinner like I’ve never fed them at all. So anyway, when we went to Tucson for the symphony thing the other week, I decided to let them eat cereal for dinner. I figured it would be best not to let them use the microwave, toaster, stove, oven or any appliance in our absence. Nick has started a fire in the microwave 3 times so far. Twice he forgot to put water in the bowl with his Ramen and the third fire was when he decided some croutons needed to be softened and the microwave would do the job. That was a fun day. I come home from church, Nick had stayed home—obviously fake sick because he had the energy to microwave a crouton --and I smell something burning. He tells me he doesn’t know what happened, the house just started smelling like smoke and he tried using Lysol to cover it up, and for three days I was freaking out that our house was about to spontaneously combust. Jer was in Korea then so I really was pretty worried. The third day out I started talking about it again and just barely out of the corner of my eye I catch the guilt in this young man’s face so he caved figuring three days had past so he wouldn’t be in trouble anymore. I gotta quit believing that kid, like the time he told me he threw up and couldn’t go to school, and he even shows me the throw-up in a bowl. I’m like, Nick, this smells like soap and looks really weird. He goes--Oh yeah, I tried to clean it out. About three months after that one, he tells me he had faked the throw-up by mixing a bunch of ingredients in a bowl. He didn’t get in trouble for either of these episodes because I am a giant sucker. Where was I? Oh yeah, I let them eat cereal for dinner when we left for the symphony and even though I’d just gone shopping, by the time we got back, there was no cereal left. None. Apparently telling them they could eat cereal for dinner meant they could and should eat every bit of it left in the house. Lesson learned. Now I know to say--you can eat ONE bowl of cereal at a time and, Nick, put the punch bowl down.