Once upon a time, on an airplane ride back from San Francisco, there was a very crabby little girl who just needed a good nap. Her extremely patient mother did not get alarmed, but tried every reasonable persuassion to get her to sleep. Once all reasonable options were exhausted, the never-failing and always patient mother pleaded “If you just close your eyes and rest, I’ll take you to Chuck E Cheese when we get home!”. Given the inherent negotiation abilities of this wise young girl, she quickly fell asleep and awoke to tell her adoring little sister “We’re going to Chuck E Cheese!”.

And that little tale leads me to this weekend…..

Each morning this week Annabelle awoke and asked “Are we going to Chuck E Cheese today?”. When Friday finally rolled around I couldn’t resist any longer and finally had to appease the girls with that ill-fated promise from the airplane.

Chriss and Paul headed to Estes Park so Nathan and Jocelyn spent the night with us and joined us on our adventure. Gwyneth is still the Goddess of Tickets – she had one token left, threw it in a game, and hit the bonus of 75 tickets. The girl can’t lose. Jocelyn is a lurker — she watches the machines and sees which kids are winning the most tickets and swoops in after them to clean up. Luckily Jocelyn and Gwyneth were willing to share their tickets and all 4 of the kiddos came home with plenty of Chuck E Cheese crap prizes.

This tale has proven I’m a momma of my word and an awesome Aunt. I know that last part is true, because Jocelyn told me so.