ell, we survived. The kids went home on Tuesday, and after a day to recover, and a day to clean the house (you would not believe where it’s possible to get popcorn!) and then another day to recover, we’re almost feeling back to normal. The cats have even almost forgiven us.

Actually, we had great fun with the kids (though I’m not joking about the popcorn – they had some left over after we went to the movies, and obviously decided it would make a good midnight snack, because in the morning we found a trail of it all through the house). We of course spent a lot of the time on the computer, playing minecraft, but we did manage to drag them out of the house for a few hours each day, so as well as going to the movies we had adventures at the swimming pool, shopping in Riccarton (the UK shop’s range of lollies kept them entranced in an agony of indecision for quite some time, as did the Discovery shop’s range of puzzles), the museum, and exploring the edges of the cordon.

I’ve always said the role of an auntie is to spoil the kids rotten then send them home for the parents to deal with the aftermath, and I think I performed that role to perfection. The kids stayed up as long as they liked (in fact a couple of nights they outlasted us!), ate what they liked, and the only real rules I enforced (other than the obvious safety things like not wandering off on their own while we were in town) were that they had to sit at the table with us to eat, and they had to help with the dishes. What are holidays for otherwise? 😉 (Ok, so it helped that they were only here a few days, so a bit of indulgence wouldn’t hurt them – and anyway, they’re really good kids – I think it would take a lot more than my efforts to properly spoil them!).

This was how I found Nephew #2 sleeping one morning when they’d gone to bed long after us – he’d been so tired he hadn’t even managed to get undressed or into his sleeping bag! (I sent the photo to brother and SIL as evidence of how well I was looking after their children ;-))

The kids insisted I take this photo of them eating apples to prove to their parents they were being good. The reality was a bit more like this:

Nephew #1 at the museum.

A “christmas tree” put up by the construction company on the site of the new temporary cathedral.

We stopped to watch this busker in Re:Start, who was attempting to Houdini his way out of a straitjacket. Nephew #2 got called up to be part of the act, but I didn’t get a photo of that because I was laughing too much.

Happy kids – my auntie work is done 🙂

ith the emphasis on the loco…  In a couple of hours, we’re off to the airport to pick up the Nephews for their first proper solo visit (is it solo when there’s two of them? duo visit?). We’ve had Nephew #1 stay once before, but that was only for a night, and Dad had brought him up to Christchurch and was staying with a friend just out of town, so we knew we had super-grandparent powers to call on if it all got too scary.  But this time it’s two kids, no parents or grandparents, for 5 whole days… it seemed like such a good idea when we invited them (or rather, when they invited themselves… round about the time I introduced them to Minecraft and casually mentioned we have it set up for multiplayer – the next question was “when can we come and visit?” :-)) but now I’m ever so slightly nervous.  What do pre-teen boys eat? (the answer, according to Mum, is everything in sight) What if they get bored? (dumb question, we’re geeks with a house full of computers and games consoles and almost as many cool toys as they have themselves!) What if they misbehave? (oh yeah, that’s right – we’re the ones who can restrict access to all the cool stuff = ultimate power :-)) What if there’s an earthquake and the house falls down on them? … Are you starting to see why I have no children of my own? Taking responsibility for other human beings is really not my strong point!

But seriously, we’re really looking forward to the visit.  They’re such fun kids, and totally share our love of all things geeky.  Nephew #2 has a very similar sense of humour to MrPloppy, and Nephew #1 and I can talk science for hours, so even if we just stayed at home and played computer games all week we’d have fun.  But we’ve got loads of ideas for fun places to go and things to do, so I reckon our only real problem will be fitting everything in.