Layla-rific

Man, I have so much stuff to recap, I don't even know where to start. I've been on the road since Christmas, it seems like. But never fear, I have returned to Chicago, caught my breath, uploaded my photos, and am ready to go. (Thanks to my sweet new digital camera, I have visual reminders of things that I have to recap. Or at least a lot of random pictures that make me struggle to remember what I was going to say about them.)

Anyway, let's set the WayBack machine for Christmas Day and talk about some hilarious times with this little lady:


This inquistive youngster is Layla, my second cousin. Josh was spending Christmas Day with Allyn's family and just had a hunch that because he wouldn't be there, Layla would be hilarious. And you know what? He was right. That'll teach him to get married and split his time between families. The Ryder family is all hilarious, all the time and if you miss it, that's your loss. (Although I did hear there was Guitar Hero at the Fike Christmas, which probably evens things out.)


Layla really enjoyed having her picture taken at this particular Christmas. Here, she's posing with Lumpy, who you might recognize as the title character from Pooh's Heffalump Movie. What you don't see is the centerpiece, which was beautiful and flowery. This inspired Layla to come up with this Art Linkletter-worthy catchphrase:

"Tim, eat a flower! Eat a flower, Tim! Do it!"

She said this many times throughout the night. For really no reason. She would also occasionally refer to things, including myself, as a "snarflack." We hypothesized that this was closely related to the "snarfblatt" of Little Mermaid fame.

Layla has apparently been learning about dinosaurs in her daycare, but you wouldn't know it from asking her about it. These conversations usually went something like this:

Me: "Layla, what do you know about dinosaurs?"
Layla: "Um...can some dinosaurs fly?"
Me: "Well sure...some could. But I want YOU to tell me what you know about dinosaurs."
Layla: "Um...Tim, are all the dinosaurs dead?"

See? She knows nothing! Although...wait. Maybe she does know a lot. In fact, I bet she knows so much about dinosaurs, she felt that she could quiz me about them. What a smarty-pants.


Here's where the evening really picked up. Kind of. Layla had received this new game called Elefun, which consists of an elephant that has apparently inhaled dozens of butterflies and has become so nasally irritated that he must snort them out into the air, whereupon the players of said game attempt to catch the butterflies with nets. Whatever, it looked fun on the box.

Here's what it looks like when the fan at the base is turned on:


Man. Elefun? More like Elephallic. (By the way, that's Alan Boy in the picture. Not to be confused with Allyn Girl.)

Anyway, the fan was pretty not-powerful and the butterflies got stuck in the trunk a lot. So basically, Elefun was judged to be Ele-not-so-fun. Did you ever get it to work, Carrie? If not, I think you should sue those stupid fun-loving kids on the box for tricking us.

INTERMISSION:

There are quite a few farm cats that hang out around the back porch out at the farm. Grandma feeds them, but they're pretty wild and don't care much for humans. Also, Carrie and I hypothesize that they're started to get pretty inbred. The pool for available mates has got to be pretty limited out there, so we think that we've got a lot of family lovin' going on.


These guys don't look all that weird. The good ones (like the HUGE orange cat that could have eaten your face) ran away before I could snap their picture.


But this one didn't, probably because it's too genetically messed up to have common sense or basic motor control. Look how puny and mangy it is! And its nose - all scabby and junk! Gross! Don't marry your cousin, kids. That's the moral of this story.

SECOND ACT:


Being totally Elefunned out, we moved on to Barbie's kitchen. Barbie had a lot of fun making "milkshakes" in her sweet kitchen. (Layla didn't come right out and say it, but I think Barbie was putting a little nip of something in the mix. She was making a lot of milkshakes. Nothing to eat. Just milkshakes. Tell me that's not shady.)

I tried to play with Layla and Barbie, but Layla said I wasn't doing it right. Being in unfamiliar territory, I assumed this was because I didn't have a character of my own to play. So I reached into Layla's new copy of Candyland (Dora the Explorer version) and pulled out Diego, Dora's little friend. (Who I hear now has his own spinoff: Go Diego Go! Man, when kids latch on to something, the companies churn out as much as they can while they're still riding the wave.)

So Diego (who strangely was voiced by Strong Bad) came over to Barbie's kitchen. But not even that was enough. Layla demanded that Diego bring his friends, so I reached back into the box and pulled out Dora, Backpack, and Boots. Backpack was voiced by Mr. Bill Cosby in a special guest appearance. At this, Layla exclaimed, "Things are getting exciting around here!"

And things did indeed get exciting and stayed that way until Diego and friends were banished from the kitchen for demanding milkshakes. (Seriously, Barbie invited them over but then proceeded to make milkshake after milkshake right in front of them and never gave them one. How rude.) Layla then got mad at me for not playing right and didn't talk to me for a while. But we made up before I left and promised to play again real soon.

Kids, huh? They're great. Anyway, that was Christmas. Next week, much talk of weddings and revelry in the Land of Ports! Huzzah!