Saturday, July 28, 2007

Babysitting

I have babysat a lot of times, but tonight was my craziest experience EVER!!! One of my friends was having a family reunion and the adults were going out to dinner, so my friend Erin, my sister, and I babysat all of the cousins (there were fourteen of them).

In the beginning we were all painting a background for a talent show we would later have. The two year old then decided that she needed a makeover, and got paint all over herself! Erin and my sister bathed her while I took care of the rest of the kids. They had dessert, and the four year old kept spilling her ice cream-what a sticky mess!

After the two year old got bathed, we split the older kids and younger kids up to practice for the talent show. Erin and I were teaching the younger ones the song "Baby Bumblebee". Then my sister called me into the older group. One of the boys was coughing like crazy and ended up puking his guts out. Of course, if my sister or Erin handeled puke, there would be a bigger mess, so I took care of that (YUCK!).

When we figured out that the boy was sick, we settled everyone down to watch a movie, and two seconds later one of the baby twins woke up. She was screaming for twenty minutes!!! Finally the parents got home and it was all good, but still the craziest babysitting I've ever done!

Monday, July 23, 2007

Vacation

I seriously bet that I have one of the craziest extended families ever! For vacation this year my family went up to Maine for a family reunion. My grandpa on my Dad's side has been married, divorced, married, divorced, etc. and so seven of his kids and his grandkids got together to meet!

Since I have such a big family, we drive everywhere we go because plane tickets would be way to much! It was an sixteen-eighteen hour drive (It depends if you have little kids having to pea every ten minutes or a dog that rides along!). We drove about 400 miles one night and then stopped only to get up the next morning and get back on the road! Everyone was tired of the car and we arrived in Maine at 11:30 p.m., I think.

If anyone has ever been to Maine, it is really pretty! My grandpa owns this bed and breakfast type thing, and it is right on the shore! The beach isn't sandy, however, but rocky. The little kids enjoyed picking up the rocks and just randomly and aimlessly throwing them. My little sister and I collected sea glass. She ended up with eighteen pieces and I only had thirteen, so she was quite satisfied. We went on the beach a lot.

We visited Bar Harbor (or as people from Maine would say "Baa Haa Baa"), and Catillac Mountain was only five minutes away, so we went up to the summit and walked around the little paths. Also, they have this ginourmous rock that is called Thunder Hole, and when the tide is right, it makes a thunder noise. See, the rocks have naturally formed a hole/cave thing, and as the water rushes in and out, it sounds cool.

Nobody can ever forget about lobster ( "lobstah") night. We had one hundred lobsters come in alive and we boiled them and ate them. However, before we ate the lobsters, my dad made us watch a video entitled "How To Eat A Lobster". It was kind of pointless, seeing how I didn't eat lobster!I don't like the taste of them. While all the lobsters were in the cooler still alive, us kids had fun picking them up and posing with them for the many paparatzis we had that week! When all the lobsters were cooked, everyone started pigging out and those who didn't like lobsters, like myself, settled for mac & cheese and hotdogs... yum!

Since Bar Harbor is a major tourist attraction, we went to downtown and looked in all the shops. It was so nice, that everyone and their brother were walking around, so it was hard to maneuver a stroller and eight kids. We went home after the first six or seven shops and told my Aunt we would meet her back at the house. On one of the overcast days, Mom, Vicki (Grandpa's wife), my sisters, and I went back into downtown and bought ourselves some souveniours. I bought a sweatshirts.

And in our spare time, my brother, Zac (he's my uncle, but we don't call him that because he's only sixteen!), I, and sometimes an extra person played monopoly. Since Zac was the banker, we were suspicious that somehow a little "petty cash" slipped into his money pile because every single time we played, he won.

Now for all my aunts and uncles and cousins! At the reunion, I met my Aunts/Uncles Stephen, Natacha, and Amy. There were more there that I already knew, however. They were Uncles Chris, Malachi, and Zac and my Aunt Tara. Now, here's all the cousins I had: Jacob, Daniel, Jonah, Alexis, Siara, Hailee, and Zoe.

So we arrived back home Saturday night at some late time in the night, and when we walked in we had a new dishwasher, a new swink faucet, and a new toilet downstairs! My Grandpa on Mom's side came up and repaired everything while we were away and my grandma had done our laundry and vacummed!

I'm sooo... glad to be home and in my own bed now! This past week has been a whole lot of fun and I think we should get together as a family every year!