The weekend after we celebrated Brian and Liam’s birthday, I had an Aunt/Niece Day with my youngest sister’s girls while she took Tiffany out to lunch. They had a good time, as did we.

The girls and I started with making lunch. Tracie has told me that they enjoy cooking or would like to cook more, so I figured we’d make our lunch together. Ashlee likes chicken nuggets and she’s the oldest, so I let her do that with my help.

She did a great job cutting cutting the breast into pieces. Then she followed the easy directions of adding beaten egg and then the add the breading ingredients. Then fried it, all with my supervision.

Macie likes vegetables and cheese, so I thought she’d like to do the broccoli tots.

She too did a great job. I helped her prep the ingredients and then she mixed and formed the tots, with supervision. I put them in the air fryer but let them cook a few minutes too long and some of them were overdone. But rest assured, none were tossed. Some were leftover for the guys to eat upon their return from work that night.

It was a tasty lunch and fun cooking together.

After we ate and cleaned up our mess, it was artsy time. I pulled out my beloved washi tape, pens, pencils, markers, inks, stencils, and stickers. I gave them each a bookmark and they decorated any way they wanted.

I think they had fun.

They are so used to pictures being taken. They’d pause and pose so quickly, all with a big smile.

Macie is a bit quicker with her crafting (well, with everything . . . she reminds me of Tiffany in that regard). If you look closely at the picture above you can see Ashlee’s just barely begun on her bookmark but that Macie’s has been painted and is sitting to dry. She as done several other pieces as well and even put a second coat of ink on the bookmark all in the same time Ashlee has spend on hers. I’m definitely more like Ashlee.

Yeah, they tolerated me taking some quick pictures and obliged me with some smiles.

When they were finished with their works of art, we moved on to a board game. But first, Macie and I whipped up some ice cream in the ice cream maker. I used a recipe from the booklet for regular ice cream for them . . .  because I’m a good aunt and won’t make them go sugar-free while they are here.

I had magic skinny chocolate nuts while they ate their ice cream. I enjoyed the Mario Monopoly game. I don’t usually care for Monopoly but this one is different and fun.

The girls spent the night, enjoying some cousin time (and some Uncle time too). They got to play games with the cousins. Tiffany was a trooper and played a lot, even though she felt miserable. She’d come down with some nasty sinus yuck and even got feverish before the weekend was over. She ended up sharing that nastiness with Sean and I, which wasn’t very fun. Thankfully Tracie said they took some E-merGenC and didn’t get anything. Whew! So glad.

It was a fun time! We’ll do it again next year. (Yeah, I’m real . . . I’d love to say before the end of the year but I know better; it’ll be next year before we do another full one like this.) But I have made plans to be a cool aunt and have them spend the night more often. We’ll see how that goes.

I hope you enjoyed a glimpse into my life. It was a special time.

Until next time, God bless,

 Michele ºÜº