Story Problems

I did quite a bit of math tutoring towards the end of school this year. Just about everyone who sat at my kitchen table told me they hate story problems.  I think they are my favorite... the longer and more wordy the better.  I began to miss them until I realized my life is one giant story problem.  Here's the homework from a few days ago:

Your three children (ages 7,5, and 2) are so full of energy that they are bouncing off the walls at home and driving you crazy.  The home has no basement to send them to.   There is a mountain of toys with a height equal to the (number of children) X (christmas) X (birthdays) X (grandma visits) that are all the suddenly 'boring'.  It is way too hot to play outside because you live in Phoenix where the heat on any given day is calculated with the equation: temperature = 100 + x where x = it doesn't matter, anything over 100 is hot.  You have already been swimming and your desire to lather sunscreen on kids (again) is given at -53.3.  You just spent all your discretionary money on a major purchase so the amount of money you wish to spend is found by taking zero dollars and adding no money to it.  Assume that no friends are available to come over to play because you would first have to pick up the house, which is out of the question.  Natalie has to go to bed in just over an hour.  Calculate the best option to entertain the kids (something they will all like) and make them tired.  What do you do?

 

Our answer was to take our first McLeskey Family racquetball excursion.  Lock them all in a small room and hope they don't hit each other with the ball.  Caroline hit Natalie once (which is on the video) and Miles didn't hit much of anything, which is good for Natalie -  not so good for Miles. Miles wore his Wilson headband upside-down so it would be a 'm' for Miles.  I bought him the headband several months ago because he was feeling left out that the girls had lots of headbands.   I bought it right after I discovered he had snuck the purple one in his pocket to wear at school.  

Ah, story problems....