I arrived on Thursday during lunchtime. The boys were off at school, but that just meant more attention for the girls. Phoebe was happy to have me over, but Sophie took some warming up - it probably didn't help that I stuck my face too close to hers while her mother was out of the room as a way to reintroduce myself. When the boys got home, they were both surprised and excited for me to visit. Everybody wanted to constantly tell me or show me something. After homework and dinner, we sat down to watch The Lego Movie, which was pretty great, though it was interrupted every minute or so with someone saying, "This next part is awesome" or "This is my favorite part" or "This is sooo funny."
The next day, after a day of errands, we picked up the boys and went to a nearby park. I mostly hung back, just helping to keep an eye on things, but Miss Phoebe (as I started calling her) did ask for my help on the monkey bars a few times. I also pushed both girls and various times on the swings, though never both at once. As I wrote in my post last Wednesday, we ended up kind of running out of there when Margot spotted a bear, but I think the kids were close to worn out anyway.
Friday was Pizza Night and Margot made some very tasty homemade pizza that we ate while watching Frozen, which was decent enough. Miss Phoebe had been practically begging for us to watch Frozen, and had even dressed up as one of the princesses in the movie during playtime that day. She was visibly excited when the movie started and she made sure I was up to speed by making occasional comments ("She's scared because of her ice powers!"). Miss Phoebe also seemed to be disappointed with my declaration that my favorite Disney movie as a kid was Dumbo.
The first day of Conference, we all ate waffles for brunch. The grown-ups had worked the night before to help prepare for the meal (Margot mixed up the waffle batter and I made an apple compote). The morning of we had waffles with the apple compote and a fresh-made strawberry syrup, lots of bacon and sausage, and even scrambled eggs. What surprised me was how much everyone one ate. I'm not a small man and I put away quite a bit of food, but that was nothing compared to Cooper and Phoebe. I ate about two and a half waffles (as well as meat and eggs), but the two middle kids both out ate me. Miss Phoebe ate about three whole waffles and I think Cooper had nearly four, with both of them still having a compliment of eggs and meat. Consider me impressed.
While there were arguments, the rest of the day mostly passed pretty smoothly. Sunday, however, things were a bit more tense. I'm sure it didn't help that Bryan had to head back to the office to work on a project, but the kids were a lot more restless the second day. To try to burn off some tension, we worked on a couple of activities in between sessions. First we played the board game Candyland, though Peter refused to participate since he voted for Clue. After we finished the game, Margot asked if I wanted to have the kids help me make a batch of cookies. I thought that sounded fine, so we headed into the dining room to get started. Peter ended up doing his own project, helping his mom make some dinner rolls, so it was me and the middle kids again.
Measuring flour with Miss Phoebe.
For the actual cookie-making process, I mostly measured and mixed everything, but I let each child take turns to dump in the ingredients. Most of my job, however, was watching the kids and sending them off to wash their hands when every they touched something dirty (i.e., the floor, their mouths, theirs noses, etc.) Cooper was observant enough to point out when a small fruit fly had landed in the batter and I was able to pick it out before mixing it up (and I took the opportunity to weird everyone out by eating the fly). The kids helped to drop the first round of cookies on the cookie sheet before the last session of Conference started, so I finished out the batch.
"Cooper, go wash your hands."
The last session of Conference didn't go as well as we had hoped, but Margot kept saying that the first day had been the best one they've had since the kids could be involved.
Did you notice a kid that I haven't mentioned doing activities with yet? That's right, Peter. Unfortunately, because of Conference, ten hours of my visit were taken up with something other than playing with the kids. Peter noticed, however, and left a note spelled out on the fridge in magnetic letters: "Do you want to play Legos?" As soon as Margot pointed out that the note was for me, I realized my mistake. I had done activities with everybody except Peter. Feeling awful but out of time to correct my error, I wrote Peter a letter. I explained that I had meant to put aside time for him, but we ran out of time (I'm sure that all of the time-outs that everyone got didn't help matters, but I left that part out). I closed the letter promising to put aside time for just the two of us on my next visit. Margot, who hadn't read the letter, said that Peter seemed to have been cheered up by what I wrote, so at least it had the desired effect.
Due to a combination of factors, I had pretty terrible insomnia while I was there and I didn't wake up until mid-morning most days. That meant that I didn't wake up to leave until after the boys had already left for school. So the final pictures we took were just with me and Miss Phoebe. She was playing dress-up again, this time as a pirate fairy princess, because I guess that's a thing. At first she was annoyed at me for leaving and refused to smile, but she eventually warmed up, probably because the girl can't resist a camera.
Look at the indignation!
Silly faces help even pirate fairy princesses smile.
Finally, a smile!
I had a blast visiting my sister and her family. It was nice to see Margot and Bryan again, but the real purpose of the trip was to solidify my place as the "Fun Uncle." While I didn't get to everything that I probably should have, I think I made a big dent in my goal. Thanks for the great time, guys!
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