My husband and I were the first couple on both sides of the family to have children. Our siblings were either still in high school or beginning college. When our kids began celebrating birthdays one Auntie (not mentioning names here) thought it would be funny to buy the loudest, most obnoxious toys around. Let’s see the first thing that comes to mind is a big Star Wars alarm clock that was VERY LOUD. Not to mention I did not know how to TURN IT OFF!

It would for some unknown reason go off in the middle of the night, so I would awake suddenly to the sound of a star ship taking off accompanied by LOUD laser sounds. The only way to turn it off was to rip the batteries out of it.

By morning a son would want to “play” with it (because obviously he slept through the whole Incom T-65 X-Wing Space Superiority Fighter invasion), because you know a 3 year old really knows what to do with an alarm clock so I would foolishly place the batteries back in so he could listen to the cool sounds of nails on a chalk board an X-Wing taking off. Hey I was a young Mom learning. And I guess the noise only bothered ME because the rest of the males in this household could sleep through the late night X-Wing invasion!

Anyways back to what I was saying, these oh so young Aunties thought this was funny. There was another Auntie who thought it would be FUN to send Birthday Boy TONS OF CANDY! Even after we screamed ‘what where you thinking’ kindly mentioned that Birthday Boy is young and ONE piece of candy would keep him hyper for a week! “Thank you for his toy, but the candy is not necessary…REALLY.”

And remember I said I was YOUNG so I did the foolish thing like open the box in FONT of my son so once the candy was spied, he made a mental count of how many piece there were and how many he has eaten. (should be an accountant).

Now my boys are older and when they are hyper from candy I can send them out to play and tell them not to return until they are dead-dog-tired. Then I go on my merry way ignoring the fact they are running wild around the neighborhood(in reality I have them in my line of site, but OUTSIDE). I can now handle (for the most part on rare occasions) my boys pigging out on candy.

In fact our tradition for Halloween is the very next day I empty their bags on the kitchen table and tell them to eat themselves sick. I figure if it makes them sick, they won’t want it as much (this has mostly worked). The remaining candy is tossed by the end of the week. (just a side note, I do not recommend this due to the lack of nutritional value. I am not a nutritionist and I don’t play one on TV either. Kay?)

But you know what they say about PAYBACK?

IT IS FUN!

(hey what did you think I was going to say?)

Now don’t tell, but this is just a SMALL sample of what my 2 year old niece will be receiving. (minus the candle =) This Auntie does not read my blog, so I can share it y’all.

Ah yes, payback is fun. This is how we “older” Auntie’s get our entertainment.