A couple of months ago we had a friend's kids stay with us while their parents went on a second honeymoon.

Things went pretty well until they came home from school the first day. That's when I realized DH and I don't own a single pencil!

They hadn't brought one home with them, and the youngest is still at the age where he's expected to do his work in pencil, not pen.

We had no idea what to do. Just as I was contemplating calling the neighbors asking to borrow a pencil, DH unearthed a drafting pencil that had been included in the tool kit we got when we closed on the house.

Great. Problem solved, right? Wrong. The pencil needed to be sharpened. If you don't own a pencil, you sure don't own a pencil sharpener. Luckily DH solved that one pretty easily--he used his multi-tool to whittle it down to a point, which the kids thought was the coolest thing ever.

So we were back in business and doing OK for a couple of minutes until the poor kid made his first mistake. Now you know if we don't own a pencil or a sharpener, we sure don't have an eraser, right?

Thankfully, his sister is at the age where they trade all kinds of cutesy things with each other, and she happened to have an fruit-shaped eraser in her backpack. Finally the poor kid could do his homework!

I had forgotten all about it until recently, when the story came around back to be through the neighborhood grapevine. Apparently the kids thought this was the funniest thing in the world and delighted in telling everyone the story about the house without a pencil!