Weekend With The Kiddos!

This past weekend, I got to see my sister and her 3 kids. Our parents and our grandparents were there, too. Family time is always chaotic and grand fun. Here's some of the stories from the weekend:

Oldest nephew (6) has a hamster named "Roger". Recently, a mouse was found inside their house, and nephew wanted to catch him and put him in the cage with Roger. He was very upset when Daddy stunned the mouse with a BB gun, and then threw him outside.

Niece was showing me how she could hop on one foot (this is big stuff for a 4-year old). Then I asked her to hop on the other foot. She nearly fell over and took youngest nephew down with her. She can only hop on the one foot because, in her words, "This is my hoppin' foot."

Oldest nephew recently jumped out of a swing to impress a group of girls at school. His shirt got caught on the swing, and ripped. When he told Gramma (my mom) this story, Mom looked and saw a tiny tear on one sleeve. "Gramma can fix that" she confidently claimed. When he took the shirt off for her later, she realized that the *big* tear was in the back... the shirt was nearly in two pieces.

My grandfather (84) was sitting in the living room, in a recliner. One of the kids was watching a cartoon on the big TV, and one of them asked him to help with a puzzle. Then, because they are kids, the short attention span drew them away to other concerns. Enter Jeff, who walks in to see Grandpa sitting at a kid-sized folding table, working a 25-piece puzzle and watching cartoons. All by himself.

Niece was sitting and drawing, and I was sitting next to her. This was late in the day's adventures. She had been hanging around me all day, constantly shouting "Uncle Jeff watch this!" and "Uncle Jeff do that!" and so on. A thought crossed her mind, and she turned to me and said, "Hey,..." Then, she looked at my mom with sincere embarrassment, pointed at me, and sheepishly said, "Sometimes I forget his name."

Stories From My Dad's Past: Big Back Yard. My grandma told a story I hadn't heard before. Apparently when Dad was little, they had about 2 and a half acres of backyard. Dad stood at the back porch and announced he was going to go to landmark that was at the back end of the property. Then he looked again. He turned back to my grandma and said, "Maybe you'd better pack me a lunch."

And finally, an AFV moment. Mom was watching the grandkids in her backyard, and could see past them to the neighbor's yard. Two dogs were there, playing tug-of-war with a rope. Then, a squirrel popped into the yard. The dogs started running side by side after the squirrel, without dropping the rope first. They ran past a tree on their way, one on either side of it. The rope caught, and the dogs got pulled around into a head-on collision with each other. Too bad no one had a video camera.

Fun weekend!