Phew!! It’s been an absolutely insane past two weeks, and believe me, I’m exhausted! Two weeks ago, my two oldest brothers brought their wives and kids for a visit. Kevin arrived first, followed a day later by Tim, Monica, Samantha, and Michael. The day after that, Kevin’s wife Jen and their two boys, Max & Brian, stopped by. We had a wild weekend which was waaaay too much fun!
The highlight of the trip for me was definitely Pirate Day! My Mom planned this whole day of pirate adventures, where the kids followed clues all around our house and the neighbor’s yard, searching for the great lost pirate treasure! Of course, there had to be a grand story involved, to make the whole thing more exciting for the kids. Which meant I dressed up as the Great Pirate Captain NoToe, of the Good Ship Phalange, whose pirate treasure had been stolen by the eeeevil no-good Pirate Badbeard! (We named him such hoping my oldest brother Kevin would play the part, since he’s grown a rather substantial bit of beardage, but alas, he didn’t want to.)
The kids gathered around the Captain’s table and I told them a tale of terrible woe, explaining the loss of my pirate booty! I introduced them to my First Mate Bones (aka my brother Tim), and then recruited each kid into my pirate crew, bestowing upon them our ship’s colors (i.e. a red bandana that I tied on their heads.) Oh boy, did they get into it!
Since I’m still not feeling all that great, I gave the kids their first clue – a photograph of some place around our house that they would have to find – and sent them off to find it, under the keen guidance and supervision of First Mate Bones. Along the way, they met The Great Commodore 64 (my Dad, their Grandpop), Quartermaster Babba (my Mom, their Grandmother), and Jen the Scullery Maid (she bestowed that title upon herself since she was doing such an excellent job helping out with keeping things running smoothly & cleaning up the subsequent messes the kids left in their wake.)
In the midst of this grand treasure hunt, there were several activities along the way: epic water balloon fights, had adventures on the neighbor’s trampoline, they recorded their hand-prints in concrete, retrieved sunken ships from a lagoon (a kiddie pool), armed themselves with newspaper swords we all made together, fought the invasion of the bubble army, played croquet, they worked together to explore ‘crocodile creek’ (our backyard), had to retrieve golden rods (spray-painted sticks) from beneath a mighty sprinkler, and they had to dig through a bucket of innards (i.e. spaghetti) to find lost golden dubloons, which of course soon devolved into a massive food fight.
At the end of this grand afternoon of adventures, they found the lost treasure chest stolen by Badbeard, which they promptly returned to the Captain’s table. I split up the treasure amongst my mighty recruits and a grand day was had by all! 🙂
Pirate Day was a huge success, definitely the highlight of the trip. Playing with Baby Michael was another of my favorite activities. He has to be one of the cutest babies EVER! We all had way too much fun playing with him.
But soon enough the visit had to come to an end. Everyone went back home over the weekend… well, that is, almost everyone! Kevin & Jen let us keep Max & Brian for another week! That was completely and utterly awesome! We spent a fantastic week hanging out, having fun, and talking a LOT.
My favorite part of being an Aunt, though, has to be our tradition of bedtime stories. It has fallen upon me to read bedtime stories, because after substituting for Mom one night a few visits ago, they discovered that when I read ‘Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’, I came up with the best voices for all of the characters. Ever since then, it’s been my duty to pick out a book and read it for the duration of their visit.
The last time they visited a few months ago, we worked our way through quite a few books, including ‘Mrs Frisby & The Rats of Nimh’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’. This time I thought they’d really enjoy the Hobbit, so each night we went off on adventures through Middle Earth with Bilbo, Gandalf, and the 13 dwarves.
I’d never read ‘The Hobbit’ all the way through before, but I’m proud to say that not only have I finally read it from beginning to end, but I read each and every word of it out loud! It was lots of fun, and we only barely finished it in time, but Max thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m still not sure if five-year-old Brian liked it or not, since he kept falling asleep through most of it, but he seemed to like it enough when he was awake at least. 🙂
So now I’m exhausted from two weeks of adventures and my voice is hoarse from two weeks of reading aloud Bilbo’s many adventures to the Lonely Mountain. Everyone has finally returned home and thankfully, I’ve finally been able to get caught up on sleep. 🙂 Now I can’t wait til the next time everybody comes for a visit and we get to do it all over again!