Dry Run

Sunday August 3rd was our nephew Noah's third birthday. We celebrated it at my parents house. It was a fun day. As we were getting ready to leave, his brother Ethan started grabbing onto my leg and saying "I want to go home with you Uncle Bobby!". Now Ethan is five, and a really great kid. He loves his Uncle Bobby and Uncle Gregg. He's a little, shall we say, "gun shy" about staying somewhere away from his parents. He's also a little afraid of dogs, especially big ones like The Boys. The Boys love kids, and would never hurt them, but they do get a little excited when guests come over. If you're five, short, and excitable, they'll love you to death. Loving you to death means knocking you down and licking your face and trust me, Labrador saliva is not very tasty. Since getting licked in the face is how I usually wake up in the morning, I'm kind of a slobber connoisseur. Anyway, Ethan promised not to change his mind in the middle of the night, and not to be afraid of the dogs. To his credit, he kept both promises.

The visit went really well. Gregg and Ethan played an online game, something about penguins (no, not Tango again!) and then we watched some Boomerang. If you don't know, Boomerang is a channel from Cartoon Network, and it plays all the old cartoons we watched as kids, like Space Ghost and Johnny Quest. Ethan was fascinated by cartoons he never heard of before. He was a little offended that Thundar the Barbarian ripped off the light saber and called it a "sun sword" but hey, no one said they were original. We let him sleep in the other room, and I told him some bedtime stories before we both fell asleep in there.

Next morning, at 7am, the first words out of his mouth were "What game should we play first?". I was about to get a lesson in five year old time management. It seems you go from one game to another, without stopping, until it's time to go to bed. So we played Chutes and Ladders, helicopter, threw parachute guys off the second floor balcony, XBox, and this candy grabber game all before ten o' clock. We took a quick time out for breakfast (Trix) and to feed the animals. Then it was off to the park to go on every swing and climby thing they had, and then back home to take The Boys out for some morning tennis ball playing. Did I mention a spin with the remote control car? All while talking non stop. We would have gone in the pool, but now it was time to go to Dave and Busters at Tempe Marketplace.

D & B's was pretty fun. We played a lot of games, won a lot of tickets, got some crappy prizes, and had lunch. I guess I knew we did a good job because Ethan didn't want to go home. I was out of energy so yes, it was time to go home! Thank goodness we're getting an infant. They don't start talking as soon as they're born right?