Typical Sunday Night

My family gets together fairly regularly -- and many of these mini-reunions are at my Aunt Judy & Uncle Jerry's house. Tonight I just happened to have a camera with me, and I 'documented' a typical Sunday evening at my Aunt's house, mainly from Ellie's point of view. (Um, I apologize to most of you for the mass amounts of pictures here -- to my sisters on the other hand, you're welcome!)

There was dinner to start with, of course. (Homemade soups and some rolls. Mmmm.) We eat well at these things. But then inevitably, my whole family ends up down in the basement, the land of the big toys . . .

Like the pool table, a favorite of Ellie's (with Aunt Talina)

Air hockey. An excited Annie was teamed up here with Star to take on Uncle David.

Uncle Cody joined in . . .

Annie takes air hockey serious . . . a little too serious . . . :-)

And there's fooz ball . . .

Ellie back to pool . . .

Annie staring up at the pinball machine, wondering if that's the next game to try out . . .

Unfortunately, the pinball machine is not currently working . . . so she needed some consoling . . .

Annie pointing out where Mom keeps the baby (and M&Ms and such) . . .

Eventually we're summoned back upstairs by the tantalizing call of dessert. In tonight's case, homemade cinnamon rolls . . .

Grandpa trying to explain to Ellie the finer points of the game of basketball . . .

It's not a family thing unless it ends up around the table for cards eventually. Here's Ellie helping Star keep score . . .

Everyone up to the table to play . . .

My Mom 'helping' my Grandpa play . . . she was probably cheating and checking out the competition before she bid on this hand. Cheater. (Kidding Mom!)

Star successfully managing a good hand, Ellie's coloring, and keeping Annie stocked with easily-openable-pistachios.

Self portrait -- just to make sure I show up from time to time. (Out of 280 pictures, I did manage to show up about 6 times -- it's a record, I think.)

Ellie played peekaboo with the camera for several minutes on the staircase. She was being so cute and cheesy.

Then she found a toy sword. She marched all around the kitchen slaying stuff.

Take that, kitchen floor!

She eventually got changed into some pajamas (and lost the hair elastic -- causing Uncle Cody to call her a troll doll), and played some music for us on the piano.

Then, in a tired/wired state, she found she could easily manage the teeny-tiny step from the hall to the front room (and then again, the one on the other side of the room, from the front room to the dining room). This caused her to run full speed from one side of the room to another, bouncing up the steps, jumping (then stepping down) the steps, for a good 20 minutes.

Annie joined in, and they started to race back and forth across the room.

Ellie thought this was about the most fun ever. When Annie tried to leave to do something else, Ellie started to search the house high and low, calling, "Sisser! Sisser?" until she found her and dragged her back into the front room for more running.

Annie usually won these races.

Eventually, after many snacks, seconds on desserts, and a lot of running, we all finally made it out to the van to go home. We were all very tired (this was at least in part due to the fact that we'd actually all hung out with my family last night too, and played cards and ate junk until far too late.)

On the drive home tonight, Annie manifested this tiredness by being completely wound up and talking non-freaking-stop (Ellie crashed and fell asleep within minutes -- like many kids who'd just run nonstop for the last several hours would tend to do.) She was funny when she got into a whole 'math kick', where all she did was obsess over numbers for the last 15 minutes of our drive. One of Annie's one-sided conversations went like this:
"Hey Mom. Mom! What is 2+2? [Not pausing long enough for an answer]. Four. That's easy. What is 5+5? Ten. That's easy. Mom, what's 6+6? [Silent pause]. Um, that's not easy . . ." as she trails off to think about it for a minute.
She then let us know that there were 50 fingers in the car. If you count Isaac's. :-) (Grandma's been working on counting by 10's).
Fifty toes too, in case you're wondering.