Missing link and Football ???

#2 headed to a friend's for what turned out to be 30 hours (day and half). This left the boys and #4 with just me no Daddy. We managed to visit daddy twice, go for a bike ride, church and the store too. The boys slept in #1's room and got along pretty well. It helped that I kept them busy. But all that changed, reverting back to the troubled norm of bickering between them this afternoon. A simple task of retrieving hoses for draining the pool turned in to WWIII, one yelling the other ignoring or doing the opposite. I could hardly stand to leave them to their own devices or correct them in love. As I caught myself yelling at them both to stop I knew I had to walk away.
How am I going to get these boys to work together? I mean if they cannot get it with each other then how ever will they survive the real world where there ALWAYS is a pain person!! Lord help me here cause I do not have the wisdom to do this one. I just know I cannot leave it as it stands. I know siblings bicker but this is beyond that, this is every day all the time.
This pattern took over and remained throughout the evening even after I banished them to the gorgeous outdoors till dinner. I ended up closing the garage door because it was just too much to hear even from inside. Then I began to wonder, is #2 being gone the missing piece. It feels as though this stuff never lasts all day when they are all together. When she arrived home I was certain that was true. Within 10 minutes we were all outside playing together as a family again. It seems someone hit the pause button at approx 1:30pm and pressed play at 7pm. This weekend seemed bliss except that blip on the screen (5 1/2 hour blip that is).
All American girl struck again when she asked me to play football with her. One minute we were snuggled talking through events occuring in the time apart the next outside learning how to throw spirals. She has got an arm too, strong and straight when she is focused. She can even catch the ball half as much as she drops it. On that note #1 didn't do half bad throwing either.
Of course now she wants to play professional ball, or at least on a team and on and on. She would play every sport if I let her, probably well too. There really isn't anything physical that she tries and cannot succeed. I suggested instead she watch football with Daddy next Sunday and learn more about the rules and positions so she knows what she wants to play. Daddy would like the company, and then maybe the boys would learn something too. Don't boys like to emulate daddy on the sports watching anyway? Eh, I will hang too, with my computer or scrapbook that is....