Originally, this last blog of 2015 was long winded about why as a child I was relegated to dishwasher duty. I am messy in the kitchen. Also there had been a paragraph or two about the number of people packed into my parents 4 bedroom bungalow for a week. It’s squishy and a little like camping only with a functioning kitchen and bathrooms. If camping were only this organized, warm and dry!

But none of those stories are as funny as the stories I am collecting from spending 7 days hanging out, in some form, with my nieces and nephews.

We just celebrated my birthday. It’s fun celebrating surrounded by kids who love any excuse to be celebrating. I baked a cake for the event and decided it would be fun to have my nieces and nephews ice it.

I had this handled.

This was my idea and as I began setting up to make the icing, oddly everyone above the age of 10 disappeared from the vacinity of the kitchen.

I had this handled.

Standing in the kitchen with my 5 little helpers all vying for attention, all wanting to be part of mixing the icing, two were arguing, two were pushing their chairs around the kitchen, colliding with each other and the 5th was cutely grunting something I couldn’t understand.

I had this handled.

Arranging the two fellas colliding was easy, next was refereeing the argument.

“So tell me what’s happening.”

“Well…”, said in a high pitched voice…

“Without the drama, just tell me the story calmly.”

“Well, she kept telling me the same thing over and over again,” her voice slightly rising, “and I already knew what she was telling me.”

“Ok, so you wanted her to cut to the chase?”

“Yes”

“Alright,” turning to the second little lady, “Your turn”

“Well, I was going to say all that, what she just said, but I was going to add one thing.”

“Ok, what’s that.”

Silence. Arms crossed.

Behind me the two little boys were getting restless. Dancing on their chairs, poking the bag of icing sugar.

“Auntie-dee-dee, how do we make icing?”

Not 5 minutes into our baking adventure and I was already not sure we’d all make it through unscathed.

New found respect for parents everywhere, how do they do this 24/7?!

The icing did get made, the cake did get iced however, before all that happened and 10 minutes into my adventure my sister stepped into the kitchen to give some tips on hardening up the icing.  I handed her my mixing bowl, relieved her of my niece in her arms and scooted out of the kitchen.

Handled 🙂