When you can't get snow for a snowball fight, pine cones will do the trick

My kids have never seen snow in their lives.  But I noticed that there must be something instinctive about snowball fights because my kids are doing it with pine cones.  We picked up a whole bag of them few weeks ago at the park across the street.  The kids wanted them, and refused to go home without them, so what a heck, I gave them a bag, packed them and thought I may get a chance to make something Christmasy with them.  Well I didn't.  So I dumped the entire bag in my desert landscaped front yard.
The kids divided them and Maggie had a bunch on one of the chairs in the front patio.  As I was sitting and enjoying a morning coffee one day, and they were riding their bicycles, I noticed they were throwing the pine cones at eachother.  Fortunately they can't throw far, so they never hit eachother with the pine cones, otherwise I am sure I'd be labeled an awful mother by neighbors and passerbys.  Half of these pine cones ended up on the driveway.

And here is Maggie, trying to charge at Patrick on the other side of the yard.

And Patrick hiding at the side of the house and picking up some pine cones, stocking his ammo bunker.