So…Brian is growing these crazy hot peppers in our garden – the purpose of which is to make a jerk chicken sauce. Aiden has tasted these peppers before…and had to have milk IMMEDIATELY after as he wiped the tears running down his face (he always plays it cool though…claiming it’s not hot while coughing and downing drinks as fast as he can). In fact, he came to me about 5 minutes after he handled the peppers the first time and had apparently rubbed his eye and nose with his hand and we had to treat those areas with milk to make them feel better. (handy trick: for hot peppers in the eye: fill a shot glass with milk and,    while leaning over, form a seal with it around your eye, tilt back and blink several times to cover your eyeball and surrounding area with milk!)

So…last Friday, I’m drying my hair around 7:30, preparing to go down and make breakfast for the boys before school. Up comes Aiden and tells me that they picked a green tomato from the garden and all took a bite. He wanted to report that it, “actually tasted good…kind of like celery!” Well then about 5 minutes later, in comes Brady SCREAMING that, “it hurts! it hurts!” I guess they didn’t stop at tomatoes…they went for the super hot peppers (remember, Aiden KNOWS they are hot…and Logan witnessed Aiden trying them for the first time and said, “um…not thanks”). So…I find out that Logan BIT into one…Aiden took a small bite and Brady ate…only God knows how much. By the time I ran downstairs, they had yogurt, milk, lemonade, sour cream, you name it, out on the counter in the kitchen trying to kill the burn. Brady literally had a red mark around the outside of his mouth (which started me yelling at the older boys because they should know better and it was picture day at school!) Anyway, I ended up putting burn cream (BURN CREAM!) on Brady’s face and gave them cereal with milk for breakfast. All was OK by the time they left for the day, but I heard multiple times that morning, “um…so this goes away eventually, right?!”

Ironically, that night, our friend Joel had a gift for the boys. You see, some of the peppers were ready while Brian traveled to London one week and Singapore the next and we couldn’t use them. Aiden took great pride in biking to Joel’s house with the peppers which he turned into hot sauce. He gave the boys this bottle on the same day they burned themselves tasting them in the morning: