Southern Fried Kidlets

I spent Labor Day weekend in

with my sister Anna and her family.

There are the twins, Madeline and Eli (4), and a new addition, Ward, who is two months old. If you're an aunt, you probably already know that you have to come bearing gifts. This consisted of circus peanuts, trucks for Eli, a princess beauty kit for Madeline, and a stuffed lion for Ward.

You could say the beauty kit was the hit of the weekend. In the kit was a selection on pink and purple hair accessories...and a tube of "lipstick." (A piece of plastic that looks like lipstick.) Madeline spent a lot of time deciding which clip(s) and scrunchies to adorn herself with each morning. And then there was the lipstick. She toted it around in a stuffed unicorn purse all weekend. And I have never seen anything like it. This little girl reapplied every 30 minutes.

"Oh, I just ate. My lipstick came off."
"I got sweaty playing outside. My lipstick came off."
"It's raining. My lipstick came off."

Hilarious.

We had a ton of fun playing outside.

At some point I was the bad witch(?) and the monkey bars lifter-upper. But mostly it was just, "Allison, watch me!"

They are total hams and posed for me at dinner time. I told them to "pretend you're eating." So they did.

But it was really because they didn't like what was for dinner at all, which they made crystal clear soon after.

I mentioned Ward. Remember?

It's kind of easy to forget this kid sometimes. He's so quiet. He just hangs out like this most of the time. Note the very serious expression. This is not just a random expression. This is how he looks all the time. I'm fairly certain he's a genius. He's pretty stinkin' cute, though.

I had fun with Anna and Brandon too, once all the little heads hit the pillows. We watched some serious football on Saturday. I had no idea that my bro-in-law played for Auburn his freshman year. Pretty bad-ass, right?

Sisterlympics: The Games We Played

Since I've been blabbing so much about Julia's recent hitchin' festivities, I gave Matthew and her their own blog label.

How I thought this would go unchallenged by my other sister Anna, is beyond me. Not that she's starving for the spotlight.

So Anna, this post is just for you.

My parents got it on 28 years ago and eventually produced a big-mouthed blonde blessing named Anna. Now while she did ruin my only-child status, she was pretty cool for a brat. She was my first BFF. And as BFFs do, we loved playing together, and we came up with some pretty sweet games.

Péoplé: Not "people." Péoplé. Péoplé was essentially Barbies, but with other toys included - Care Bears, Breyer horses, She-Ra, My Little Ponies...One (fuzzy blue) pony in particular was Wind Whistler. Anna would make this annoying wind-whistling sound whenever that damn horse did anything, and she got this far-off look in her eyes when she would fly it around the room.

What a weirdo. To get back at her, I cut off one of her Barbies' hair. I told her it would look really good. It didn't. From that point forward, the ugly short-hair Barbie was the bitch Barbie.

Softball: I somehow always talked Anna into pitching. (Sucka!) And I somehow always hit her with the ball. And I somehow always got blamed. WTF? We didn't play a lot of softball.

Quitters: My parents foolishly allowed us to watch the movie "Critters" as children. This wasn't a foolish decision because of nightmares or anything wussy like that. It was foolish because we got super-into scaring the crap out of one another at a really young age. During games of Quitters, we would turn all the lights off and pretend we were being attacked by these little creatures from the movie.

Scare the Crap Out of Your Sister: This game involved hiding in your sister's room until she was in bed, and then...scaring the crap out of her. This was an awesome game. I was definitely the overall winner of this game.

Pick What You Want: Open a catalog and pick one item from each page, including color. Major penalty for picking the same thing someone else picked.

Pick Who You Are: Watch a TV show and pick who you are. For example, from Kids Incorporated, I was Renee, and Anna was Stacy. That's right, Anna picked Fergie, and I picked buck-toothed Renee.



These days the game we play most is phone tag. Love you, sister.