My weird gene pool

A comment from my cousin Angie (hi Ang!) got me thinking last week about about our strange family. I mean strange in a good way though! Many of my childhood memories have to do with my cousins and the games we would play together. When I was a kid, most of my summers and after school days were spent with my cousins under the watchful eyes of my Aunt Jacque. I don't know what she did to her sisters as a child to earn the right to watch all of us on a regular basis but it must've been something horrible!! =) Anyhoo, there were 7 of us that pretty much grew up together: me and my older bro, Michael, and my cousins Ryan, Angie, Maria, Chet and Carrie. The boys were all roughly the same ages (except for poor youngest, picked on cousin Chet) and the girls were too. We were all at least within a couple years of each other. So mostly us girls stayed together playing in our "house" under the tree because everyone knows that boys are gross and loud and disgusting and the boys would all be building a tree fort or shooting bb guns at birds or some other nonsense. Anyhoo, what I started remembering were the games that we used to play as children. This is where the weird gene pool stuff came up - I mean how on earth did we think of these things?!?! One that springs to mind is something that Carrie and I used to do. Let me give you a few details about the nature of our relationship first though. Carrie and I were 5 months apart - I was (obviously) the oldest and most mature of the two. Nearly every day, from the ages of 4-10 (roughly) we would get in a fight. Not just a good old-fashioned name calling exchange (although those sorts of things were prevalent) but an actual fist fight. Or more accurately, a slapping fight. A good example is this: one day we were outside playing on the swing set in Aunt Jacque's backyard. I was maybe 5 or 6. Carrie was doing tricks on the monkey bars (we were perfecting a REALLY impressive routine that ended with a back flip off of a moving swing) and I was swinging. Apparently I was swinging too hard though because I was shaking the whole swing set. Carrie was quite unhappy about this and after screaming at me to stop for a few minutes (which of course only made me swing harder) she actually got off the monkey bars and came over and slapped me across the face. Naturally I smacked her back. I must've gotten her pretty good because she then went running inside to tell on me. So I smugly sat there, glorying in my supremacy and fully enjoying the swing set all to myself until it occurred to me that if Carrie was inside crying and I was still outside swinging with a grin on my face I was gonna be the ONLY one that got into trouble. So I began to cry as loudly as I possibly could and went running inside to tell on Carrie for hitting ME first. As soon as I got in the backdoor, Carrie immediately ceased her crying and began to yell, "She wasn't crying! I didn't hurt her! She's only faking so she won't get into trouble!" and on and on. I sobbingly explained that she did, in fact, hurt me, it just took me a minute or two to feel it. So we BOTH got punished. And then we were best friends again after about 5 minutes. This is pretty much how things went for about 5+ years of our lives. We were 10 before we spent a day together without hitting each other. Or threatening not to be each others cousins anymore. =) So anyways, we would play this game called "Leeches." Here's the gist... Aunt Jacque's house was on Little Lake Jackson so we would take out ONE inner tube and swim out as far as we possibly could (practically to the middle of the lake!) and then one of us would yell "Queen Leech!" or "Leeches!" or something like that and then we would both attempt to get all of our bodies out of the water and onto the ONE inner tube without falling off or impaling ourselves on the metal pump that stuck out so as not to be eaten by the leeches. I should probably mention that there were no leeches in the lake. At least no real ones anyways. This was all in our heads and we would stay out there for what seemed like hours trying to avoid the leeches. Weird, huh? Then there was another game that we all played together. It was kind of like Hide 'N Seek but not really. We called it Seek 'n Hide. A subtle, but distinct, difference. I think the main thing that set it apart was that the Hiders would go and try to find the most awesome hiding spot ever and then the Seeker would come and look for them BUT once you were in a hiding spot you didn't leave until you got found. So there was no racing for "base" unless the Seeker spotted you and you wanted to try and outrun them. The goal was to obviously to have the best hiding spot. Some notable spots were: the dryer (Angie hid in there. Once.) which turned out not to be too effective because Aunt Jacque walked by and shut her in it and then she started screaming at the top of her lungs and we all knew exactly where she was, the top of a cabinet in the main bathroom which required you to squinch yourself into about 6 inches of space, getting in the mirrored closet in Aunt Jacque's room, or climbing into a toy chest or under a bed. But by far the pinnacle of our weirdness came in the form of a game that we called "Follow the Yellow Brick Road." We would all shut ourselves in the middle room, and pile all the pillows in the house into a big pile in the middle of the floor and then turn out the lights, and stuff blankets and towels into the cracks of the door so that absolutely NO light got into the room. Then we would break into two groups on either side of the room and each group would hold hands as we would starting singing, "Oooohhhhhh, weeeee'rrreeeeee off to see the Wizard! The wonderful Wizard of Oz!!!!" at the top of our lungs while running as fast as we could toward the middle of the room. This always ended in a violent collision (well, duh) in which someone inevitably would get injured (cough, Carrie, cough). So we would tend our wounds, pile all the pillows back up and do it all over again!! And while, yes, it was a LOT of fun, it was also very, very strange. And don't even get me started on the madness that occurred down at the Lease. I'm surprised we all made it to adulthood with all of our limbs.

So now many of us kids that used to play together have kids and I'm just sitting here thinking that they certainly have some strange genes coming to them! They are probably gonna make up some crazy games or do weird things on a regular basis but at least we'll know where they get it!! From that crazy Heston side of the family. =)

Kids, kids and more kids!

So I watched Michael and Amy's kids this past weekend so they could go to a marriage conference... I know, I know - I'm an awesome sister. And sister-in-law. It wasn't technically a weekend, just one night but it worked out to be over 24 hours of me & Sean (but mostly me!) being responsible for the care, maintenance and feeding of 5 children. I may never fully recover. Here is a little taste of just SOME of what we got to experience over the weekend. Enjoy!! You may want to turn your speakers down before enjoying the following clips though. But don't turn them off or you won't be able to fully understand what I went through.

I'm sure you noticed how Hannah, once she noticed that I was filming her, began to pose for this!! =) And then there were the drums....

Just so you know, Blayne's NOT grabbing Hannah's booty but rather trying to get her to get up so he can have a turn sitting on the stool. He's saying "tee-turn" which means "it's Blayne's turn." So we spent a good hour or so jamming out in Ethan's room. At least that's all the time I spent in there - Blayne absolutely loves Ethan's drums so he sneaks up there whenever he can.

For reals, though, we had a good time! We played video games, watched movies, ate junk food, played outside... It wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I'm not saying I would be able to do it everyday but for one night, it was fun. I was glad to be able to spend some QT with my nieces and nephews and Blayne LOVES his cousins so he had a blast. The kids were pretty cute about it too. They were actually excited that we were having a sleepover! Ely ended up in bed with me, Sean and Blayne (ha!) and he snuggled me all night. Blayne was NOT happy about that. And then Hannah told me on Sunday, that she wished we could stay longer. Awww!