Llamas always lick if your name is Mae.

From where I sat, my favorite Saturday night brain-snapshot looked like this:  Kenny was sock-sliding into the kitchen with a plate filled with freshly grilled burgers and hot dogs.  My brother was spinning the swivel chair as fast as he could while the cat hung on with all her might (and all her claws).  My niece was laughing hysterically at herself because her motto is: It doesn't really matter if anybody else thinks I'm funny; I KNOW I'm hilarious.  The kids are all gathered around the food because they know that in order to earn smores, they must first endure real food.  And the dogs are both tangled amongst the kids' legs, waiting eagerly for food to drop to the floor (which, of course, it did).  And I like to just sit and watch sometimes because these people and this house and these days just make me so happy.

Then it was Sunday.  It was more than apparent that the weekend was coming to an end and the dog was NOT happy about it.  On Saturday, Mae and her friend, Grace, had dragged Mae's mattress off of her bed and into the living room.  They then set up a tent around it, filled it with comfy pillows and blankets, found a flashlight and had a 'secret sleepover'.  We won't tell them that every word they whispered echoed throughout the house. 

On Sunday morning, when the tent was taken down and the mattress was stripped, Teeyl-doggy let it be known that she was not having any of this.  It is still Saturday and it will always be Saturday and the smell of grilled food and laughter donning the entire house is vital to her very existence.  She placed herself onto the mattress in such a manner that she thought we could not move her.  And it turns out that we couldn't, but mostly just because we were doubled over with laughter:

She stayed like this for a very long time, all limbs sticking straight out and making her body as heavy as possible.  (We didn't have the heart to move the mattress until it was getting dark outside.)

Unsure what to do with our Sunday, we headed to Lincoln to drop Grace off and purchase food that required us to do nothing more than eat it (pizza).  We then decided that even though we're not your typical pumpkin patch kind of family, we'd give it a go this year.  It wasn't until we'd already arrived at the pumpkin patch and paid that I realized I was not wearing proper pumpkin patch footwear.  Walking through the corn maze in high heeled boots was less than pleasing, and Kenny called me a 'bad example' when he caught me cutting through the corn toward the exit. 

Speaking of bad examples, please enjoy the following photos of Mae and Kenny showing us how children do as we do, not as we say.  I would like to add that before Kenny came climbing up the haystack (rather than using the wooden steps provided), Mae was sliding down the slides happily and properly.

See how Mae was all ready to go down the correct way, until she spotted her dad swooping down the INCORRECT way?

You can't hear him, but when this was taken he was saying, "No, Mae, you shouldn't go down like that..." as he was fully ready to catch her.

And one last picture, just because it makes me laugh.  Mae has a way with llamas.  At the fair last year, she was licked from chin to forehead by a llama.  This photo was taken right after she was licked in the back of the head as she turned to say, "Mom, look, this one didn't lick me!"

We picked our pumpkins and purchased snacks.  I ate my very first caramel apple and I shouldn't have.  It was delicious but really, my bad habit limit is pretty much full and I shouldn't be trying to add more.  I suppose it can be a once-a-year deal.

When we got home, we ate makeshift leftover supper.  The kids took showers and got their backpacks ready for school.  They were both fully asleep by six o'clock.  I guess they can only handle so much weekend.  Fun is exhausting!