Aunt for the Afternoon

Emily had a lot to do today, so I volunteered to have the kids over.
I took them swimming,
then fed them otter pops while they were on the driveway and still in their suits,
then I put Sophie in the bath
and told Ethan to take a shower
and made them lunch.
After lunch we played with Lady Mortimer
and any toys I had around.

I don't have a lot of little kid toys,
but I have a large basket full of stuffed animals
and plastic crocodiles.
Here is Sophie going through the collection.
And below, here are Sophie and Ethan playing dress-up:

Ethan gravitates towards the cloaks (and anything wizardly).
Sophie likes fluffy sparkly princessy things.
In this incarnation of dress-up
(she went through several)
she is wearing Aunt Elaine's old velvet house robe,
a belly-dancer scarf with jangling spangles that I picked up in an Egyptian market visit,
and my wedding veil
(I recently made the decision to add the veil to the dress-up collection--
it's not like I am ever going to wear it again,
and I know how much my nieces love stuff like that.)
I much prefer a day of this to TV.
Emily came over later in the afternoon
and took us all back to her house for dinner.
After dinner I read Ethan several chapters of
"The Hobbit"
while he played with his Legos:

And Sophie dug about in the yard and got dirty again
and needed ANOTHER bath.
She is so cute in the tub,
but she is getting old enough that tub pictures can be embarrassing,
except I figured that this one is still pretty safe:

I did have a great day.
For one thing, we did physical things rather than just TV,
and I needed a mental break.
It felt good to do absolutely NO academic work for 24 hours.