It’s been all fun and games for most kids in Witch Falls
today. For Ethan, Ehlana, and me, our
fun started with breakfast with Grandma and Grandpa. When it was time to go home again, Mom came
over to pick us up; I helped out with getting the twins and our bags inside;
and then I was set free to meet up with Rowen and get on with our wintry play
day.
There wasn’t more snow, but some boys had decided to try
building a toboggan run by hauling nearby snow by the sled-full and filling in
the bare spots left from overuse yesterday.
Rowen and I watched that semi-successful operation for a while; had a
fairly entertaining snowball fight that was instigated by a pair of un-named
girls who ambushed the unsuspecting toboggan run builders; and went for a few
slides down the hill on shared sleds before word got around, and there were too
many kids all trying to get in on the unexpected bonus time on the slopes.
After leaving the hill, we went back to my house for hot
chocolate and a snack, and then we spent the rest of the morning hanging out in
the lounge with Ethan and Ehlana. We
played our flute and saxophone; did a little telekinetic video gaming that was
mostly for Ethan; and basically just goofed off until lunchtime. For Rowen and me, lunch was a picnic for
four, and before you get too excited Aunt Leanne, the other two members of that
foursome were Rowen’s parents; and the picnic was at the computer store. Patricia has been joking since then that our
surprise lunch visit was exclusively to butter her and Owen up to get sleepover
approval, but that was totally just an added bonus, and we really did put the
picnic together just so we could spend a little extra time with them. Having the sleepover at Rowen’s didn’t really
work out all that well for us either, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
Our afternoon included picking Ethan and Ehlana up after
lunch and taking them to the park for some play time that included making
toddler and tween-sized snow angels; slide action that had Ethan suggesting
that wearing snow pants for that year-round would be a lot more fun; a brief,
too-cold time on the swings; and a walk along the path to the falls and
back. We had our afternoon hot chocolate
and snack break at the Inn, and then Rowen and
I took Ethan and Ehlana home again. I
packed my bag for another sleepover away, and we took that, and our flute and
saxophone, over to Rowen’s house after doing a round of goodbye hugs with Mom
and the twins.
With the holiday rush over for another year, the computer
store was back to normal winter hours, and Patricia came home early to start
making dinner. She had two volunteers to
help with the work, and that’s when we found out that there were going to be
two sleepover guests at the Emersons.
I’m not sure if it was worse tonight because this had been the first
chance Patrick and Scott had to unleash their pranks and jokes on us since the
start of the Christmas break, but the two boys were in top form all night – and
still are even as I write this between interruptions.
Patricia, Rowen, and I had dinner ready by the time Owen got
home with the junior jokesters, and for the next forty-five minutes; Patrick
and Scott entertained themselves by trying their best to gross the rest of us
out with their food analogies, jokes, and a display of dining skills that would
have amazed any pack of starving wolves.
I won’t go into the details, and Rowen and I were both very glad to help
her parents when it was time to clean up.
Doing the dishes didn’t give Rowen and me a reprieve from
Patrick and Scott, since they quickly volunteered to help too. Their help probably added ten minutes to the
work time, and they didn’t actually get anything useful done while trying to
splash Rowen or me with water; putting clean dishes back into the dirty stack;
and an attempt at a leftovers food fight that Owen thankfully stopped
immediately after two spoon-flung pieces of pasta hit their marks. Getting a noodle and sauce in my hair was
gross, and so was getting it out, but Rowen was more annoyed because she needed
to change her top so that her Mom could spray it with stain remover.
The hits, mostly metaphorically, have continued all night. Our music practice was constantly interrupted
by things like the boys playing YouTube videos of screeching cats or of them
staggering into Rowen’s room and pretending that our music was killing them –
over and over again. Rowen was already
wishing she had a dart pipe to blow on instead of her flute by then, but there
was still much more to come. While
watching a movie in the living room, Patrick and Scott spent all of their time
pranking us. Creepy-crawlies would brush
up against our feet and ankles from under the sofa, or on our shoulders and
hair from above. The list went on and
on, and though Rowen and I managed to get through the movie, we came back up to
her room for the rest of the night right after it was over.
Unfortunately, the boys came upstairs too, and they had a
large cache of weapons of mass annoyance available to them in Patrick’s room
that they were not afraid of using.
Prank and joke delivery systems included a remote-control monster truck
and a micro helicopter; rubber worm and spider-throwing slingshots; water guns;
a robot; and a squadron of paper airplanes.
Short of using a little Magi power, there doesn’t seem to be
anything Rowen and I can do to put an end to the little brother and sidekick
games tonight – even bribery didn’t work – so I’m going to wrap this up and
we’re going to turn the lights out and at least pretend to go to sleep. It might work – or not.
Until next time, this is Magi Master Cassie Proctor; logging
out!
