The Rest of the Story

As promised, here is the rest of the story of Anna's Labor Day fun. . .

It started off as a little last-minute get-together at our house: my parents, Cesar's gang, & Ross and family. When everyone arrived, we ate some delicious barbecued pork roast that Paw Paw made along with some yummy sides, and the kids quickly moved on to Maw Maw's fabulous bag of tricks.

If anything can be said about my mother, it's that she is an amazing entertainer of children. She has the patience of a saint, is tireless, keeps them engaged & focused, and never ever ever runs out of fun things to do! On this particular occasion, she brought her face painting gear, and each of the kiddos got to pick a design out of her book.

Anna was my little rock star. . .

Emma went for the floral look. . .

While Arianna, the wiggle worm, opted for the snow princess. . .

Here are the girls together in their face-painted, cookie-eating glory. . .

(And no, Emma was not posing with the cookie. She truly got tired of me asking them to smile, and decided it was time for a bite of sugary goodness.)

Now Nico, who just started the second grade, would like for us to think that he's getting too old for most of our "fun", and he had me believing that he didn't get anything painted - until I totally busted him after catching a glance of his superhero-esque palms!

(And yet another testament to my mom, she actually made a trip back to her house to retrieve my nephew Seth's massive transformer collection to save Nico from all things pink and girly at my house. She earned some major "cool points" with Nico there!)

Little brother Santi wasn't so lucky as to get an escape from the all pink, all the time, girly-girl-land. Didn't bother him any, though - and he cooked quite a few mean (but fake) microwave dinners in that pink kitchen. With pink bowls. And pink mixing spoons...you get the idea.


So then the question. . .what to do when you still have plenty of face paint left, but all willing facial real estate is already occupied?

You give the kids creative freedom, of course. . .with their feet! Totally like letting the inmates run the prison, but only just a little less dangerous.

Here is what Ari came up with. I have to say I do think that the blue nail polish adds a little something as well. . .

And here is sweet Olivia, oblivious to the mess the older kiddos were getting into, but having no trouble finding her own fun nonetheless. She's also oblivious to the fact that she's a mere week (or less!) away from becoming a big sister, but I have a feeling she's going to get wise soon enough! She played a lot with Anna's babies, so we'll consider it practice. She's gonna be a great little helper, Mommy!

Then we find ourselves in this predicament. . .what do you do when your kids are fed, literally covered from head to toe in face paint, and clearly in need of something else to do? Um. . .give them sugar?

Anna wanted "pink" (strawberry), and Ari went with the cookies 'n cream, as you can probably tell from the oh-so-lovely moustache.

Then, as all sugar highs usually go, the kids just started running out of steam. This was my filthy little monkey, covered in dirt and smeared face paint, right before she passed out on my shoulder. . .

Then all the kids left, crashed in their respective beds (or couches), and all of the parents of the world rejoiced (and maybe possibly took a little nap, too).

The End.