Building a Deck with 4 children and a Stubborn Father

As if building a deck in two days, is not hard, throw in 4 children, a stubborn father and a million mosquitos.   Saturday morning came and my brother arrived along with four of his five children, who range from 3 to 13,  and unfortunately a million and one  mosquito's.  Add to the mix my father,  who is in the  end stage of cancer and doesn't walk very well, but still thinks he can do all the things that  he used to. Once all the people had arrived, we started the deck by tearing off the old stairs.   After we got the stairs off the house, we proceeded to sit on the patio and wait for Menard's to deliver the lumber.   This  was especially frustrating because it should have been delivered   2 hours earlier.   The truck finally arrived and all the lumber was unloaded one hour later.   About that time, I heard my mom yell "Denise!!", I turned to see my dad standing by the patio door.  My heart skipped a beat because he does not stand well, and now there were no stairs.  I ran around and into the house and helped dad down the other stairs and got him seated just in time to hear my niece crying. She had been holding the nail for her brother who had missed the mark and had hit her finger with the hammer.    I ran to the house to get boo boo bear out of the freezer and grab a band aid. 

After those two catastrophe’s were taken care of, I took a breath of relief and got back to my brother and the building of the deck.  I picked up two boards and brought them to my brother.  Just as I was lying them down, I heard my nephew crying that he was being attacked.  I asked what the problem was, and both my niece and nephew told me that mosquitos were attacking them.  I realized  that yes, we had been invaded by mosquitos.  We lit a fire in the fire pit, and put wet wood on it  to try to smoke them out, that worked, for about 10 minutes.  I sprayed all the kids with deep woods off and that worked, for about 10 minutes.  We lit the citronella torches and that helped, for about 10 minutes.  My mom finally went to the local hardware store and bought a fog machine.  She had to re fog every 20 minutes.  At the end of the day, we had half of a deck, 192 mosquito bites between us, and  a great memory  to file away.