Kimmy don't play that.

Sunday was calm and pleasant, in keeping with Saturday's theme.

We went to church and then had lunch with friends and then visited another friend.

Today was when it got serious.

We got up this morning and went to the store to finish putting together some gifts for the kids we would be visiting. You might remember from last year's posts, that our whole reasons for being acquainted with this corner of Florida was these six kids in the custody of their cancer-patient grandmother.

We got their gifts wrapped up and headed over and dove right into the chaos.

Six hours later, we had been to the bowling, arcade and brought home pizza.

The theme of today is "loud and disorderly."

The kids liked bowling but with seven people playing and their tiny attention spans, we had a hard time getting everyone to take their turns. We struggled through one game and I cancelled the second one that we had paid for and sent them all to the arcade. The two eldest went to play laser tag, which they did last year and loved. One of them was whining about having to wear shoes and so he didn't seem to be enjoying himself as much as he could.

The kids all ran around the arcade, playing games and winning various prizes and tickets. When it was all through, the two little boys had run out of money in a manner that was unsatisfactory to both and one was crying about not winning a prize and one was LIVID about his money being gone.

Mom and I decided to go win some more tickets in order to get the kids some prizes and calm everyone down. But, we only appeased one child.

The other one, who is lucky he's my favorite, had a total and complete meltdown.

Now, I'm not the type to back down from a screaming kid. I'm not like those moms/nannies you see getting all worried about people looking at them when their kid makes noise in public. Not. At. All.

But, I guess, no one told this kid that, because he ran away from me and gave me a dirty look so I marched right after him and told him his brother was going to get all of the prizes. That made him slow down and he hesitated and I grabbed him.

And then.

And THEN.

He screamed. At the top of lungs, legs kicking, arms flailing, full-fledged tantrum right in the bowling alley.

It was on.

I took him by the arm but he yanked away and dropped himself onto the floor. I went all ghetto and was like, "Hold my purse" and then I man-handled that boy in the tightest grip I could manage and hauled him back to his caretaker, depositing him in his chair and washing my hands of the whole tantrum with a quick explanation about what was happening.

He calmed down while we went and picked his prize for him, to be secretly handed to his mother and received at a later time.

We're only here one day, so I can't just leave without giving the kid his prize.

There was no more drama for the rest of our time with them, but on the way home in the AVENGER, we did get pulled over.

We prepped our excuses; being from Ontario (our rental plates say so), we thought we had some leniency this week. Also, Mom has been having various troubles with the controls in the unfamiliar car.

Turns out that's all it was; we had been driving with no headlights. The cop was really nice and just made sure we figured out how to work them and then told us to be safe and have a good night.

So we did.

Tomorrow, we hit the beach! Woohoo!