Originally, this last blog of 2015 was long winded about why as a child I was relegated to dishwasher duty. I am messy in the kitchen. Also there had been a paragraph or two about the number of people packed into my parents 4 bedroom bungalow for a week. It’s squishy and a little like camping only with a functioning kitchen and bathrooms. If camping were only this organized, warm and dry!
But none of those stories are as funny as the stories I am collecting from spending 7 days hanging out, in some form, with my nieces and nephews.
We just celebrated my birthday. It’s fun celebrating surrounded by kids who love any excuse to be celebrating. I baked a cake for the event and decided it would be fun to have my nieces and nephews ice it.
This was my idea and as I began setting up to make the icing, oddly everyone above the age of 10 disappeared from the vacinity of the kitchen.
Standing in the kitchen with my 5 little helpers all vying for attention, all wanting to be part of mixing the icing, two were arguing, two were pushing their chairs around the kitchen, colliding with each other and the 5th was cutely grunting something I couldn’t understand.
Arranging the two fellas colliding was easy, next was refereeing the argument.
Behind me the two little boys were getting restless. Dancing on their chairs, poking the bag of icing sugar.
Not 5 minutes into our baking adventure and I was already not sure we’d all make it through unscathed.
New found respect for parents everywhere, how do they do this 24/7?!
The icing did get made, the cake did get iced however, before all that happened and 10 minutes into my adventure my sister stepped into the kitchen to give some tips on hardening up the icing. I handed her my mixing bowl, relieved her of my niece in her arms and scooted out of the kitchen.
Recently, I took my two nieces on a little road trip. They are at the perfect age where they want to be involved in what the adults are doing, even if it’s just eavesdropping.
Ahh, do I remember! A birthday gift from Grandma. An Arts & Crafts project that I was elected to help supervise that turned into me putting together the Yorkshire terrier yarn dog itself. The instructions for the craft looked simple enough but simple instructions don’t always translate to a simple, well-crafted project! Auntie D’s Yorkshire terrier yarn dog in no way resembled the picture in the instructions booklet. “I wish Grandma were here, she’d be able to make this better than you!” the same youngest niece had flatly informed me as I fumbled with 5 stray strands of yarn that went flying across the living room floor. You get the picture of what the yarn dog ended up looking like? And how my niece felt about the final product? A big lump of indistinguishable yarn!
“Of course, what did you name it?” I asked expecting an answer.
Complete silence from the backseat.
You know when two chatty ladies go completely silent, SOMETHING is going on. I tried thinking up a logical scenario for such silence and couldn’t imagine a suitable reason.
The youngest continued in her silence and I could only imagine she was making faces at her sister.
“OK, ok I will tell her for you, I will tell auntie D what you called your yarn dog,” she reiterated for emphasis, maybe even for approval.
More hesitation and a long pause.
“She called him MATZ**!” my eldest niece exclaimed loudly but firmly. There was no joking in her voice, simply a sense of urgency to get a terrible message out and then retreat as far back into her seat as possible.
I burst out laughing! I could hear the relief from the backseat of the car.
“He just looked like a Matz,” my youngest niece said flatly, no expression.
And so if the Yorkshire terrier yarn dog is any indication of what a Matz looks like, it is indistinguishable, misshapen, and poorly crafted!!
**Name changed. Why so funny? He was someone I had been seeing a year ago. I am not sure if my nieces were concerned that I would be upset at the choice of name? Or perhaps the youngest just really thinks her yarn dog looks like a human being. Needless, it was important for her to let me know of her Yorkshire terrier yarn dogs name and that in itself is really funny.
We are all well aware of Bat Man, Cat Woman but move over Bat Girl has arrived in town!
I love my niece’s and nephew primarily for how ridiculous they can be and funny.
It is important to know Bat Girl is on the loose today. My favourite part of the outfit are the yellow gloves.
So in other news, I spent the other day at the mall with another little munchkin. She’s a good little shopper but has decided malls are best for playing tag and hide and seek.
And off she’d dance circles around me trying to get me to run.
Instead of tag we settled for throwing pennies in the water fountain. I only had one penny, I know why didn’t I come prepared!! But that’s ok because it is fully acceptable to reach into the water and get the penny for a second, third, fourth, fifth throw. On the umpteenth throw the penny landed in with it’s friends. This is when the penny throwing came to an abrupt end.
We were also chewing gum that day. Its a big girl thing to do but after chewing for an hour she decided to spit it out.
And off she darted to dispose of her gum.
And with that she opened her mouth wide so I could smell her fresh minty mouth.