Saturday, October 31, 2009

Consolation Prize

In all my life, I have never been more happy to be someone's consolation prize.
Admittedly, most people don't really ever want to get or want to BE a consolation prize. And there have been times in my life where that has definitely been the case.  But not last night. Allow me to explain.

This weekend was my brother's fall break. He and his family have been planning for MONTHS to go camping in Brown County this weekend. Michelle (his wife) scoured the map of available campsites and carefully chose the best spot. Their kids have been talking about it for weeks. It was a perfect opportunity to get away and spend some time outdoors and avoid the Halloween parties that they don't participate in. We were all excited for them.
Wednesday evening Michelle went to the store and bought a bunch of fun camping food for the trip, then came home and checked the weather.
Thunderstorms and wind forecasted for Friday and Saturday. Not wanting to tell their story, the long and short of it is they decided not to go camping afterall. There was major heartbreak for all parties concerned.
We were all disappointed for them.
So then they began to plan other fun activities to fill their weekend with and help them to forget about what they had planned.
At about 4:30 PM on Friday, Everette and I invited them to come over and eat pizza and hang out. So all five of them braved the rain and headed over.
We had the best time EVER!!
Elijah brought his Legos and he and Brian and Uncle Everette had a great time building things.
Michelle and I perused cookie cook books and discussed friends having babies, obgyns and cookie exchanges--you know typical woman chitchat.  After dinner uncle Everette decided it was a good time to change the fish water, despite my reservations it turned into a series of hilarious events. Elijah siphoned the fish water, delish! Then when it was time to refill the tank the tube malfunctioned and began to spray water all over the living room, unnoticed, until Mary noticed and started yelling, "help! help!"
Jonathan pushed Emily around in his car and was a perfect gentleman (well mostly).
 After the fish water was cleaned up, Uncle  Everette decided it was bath time, so Emily and Jonathan jumped in the big tub in our room.


The jets + a little bubble bath =3 feet of foam=fun for everyone=lots of bubbles on the floor.


Brian took his guitar up and provided bath  music.

In fact, there were so many bubbles, they had to be transferred to another tub to wash and debubbled.
 
The older kids, not to  be left out, jumped in afterward and played together.




Michelle, in what might have been a moment of weakness she hopefully didn't come to regret, decided to put ALL the kids down in various bedrooms, so we could continue hanging out.

We dressed Mary and Elijah in matching t-shirts, because we couldn't help ourselves and they nestled down in our king-sized bed.

This is what the looked like when we came in to get them up. Later we found out that they used the blankets and the pillows to make a nest. (p.s. these kids were not faking it for the camera.. they were OUT! We had the lights on and the camera flash and they did not stir.)
Laura dropped by after the kids were in bed.
We caught up on episodes of The Office, then moved onto hilarious YouTube clips of Brian Regan(see below)



They stayed until almost 11:30 PM.
We the best time with them we'd had in a long time.
Brian, Michelle, Elijah, Mary, and Emily we are so sorry you didn't get to go on your great camping trip. But we sure are glad we could be your consolation prize!!!

No comments: