Aunty Business

I am participating in the Blogging From A-Z Challenge. Each day in April (except the last 4 Sundays), I will post topic themes that begin with the letters of the alphabet, from A-Z. There is a saying that a woman wears many hats. I'm no exception. During the course of the Blogging From A-Z Challenge, I'll be posting about the different facets of my life. Today's letter is A, which brings us to my role as an aunt.

Being an aunt is my next favorite thing to being a mom & wife. I have 2 handsome nephews (ages 4 & 14) and a beautiful niece (age 11). It took me awhile to find my groove as an aunt to my oldest nephew & my niece b/c they were already 6 & 9 when I met them. I feel like I've got a good handle on the aunty business now, though.

Much like the mommy business, aunty business can be tough. I've had to make some difficult decisions, particularly when it comes to my youngest nephew. I don't want to rehash the details, but suffice it to say, we fostered him for awhile back in 2010 & I was his daycare provider for several months last year. His life has been anything but stable & it's my strongly held belief that when your immediate family can't get the job done, your extended family should. (Ideally everyone would work together, but that doesn't happen often.) With my oldest nephew & niece, the challenge has been more along the lines of trying to play referee when they start arguing w/ each other. Those 2 weren't blessed w/ a terribly attentive mother & there for awhile they were acting out as a way to get attention. Most of that has stopped, but there were a couple years or so when we preferred having them visit separately rather than together b/c it was just too much sometimes.

For all the ups & downs, I wouldn't change a thing. I love being an aunt! Since words are failing me this morning, I think I'll share a photo of one of my all-time favorite memories as an aunt. This photo was taken at a local pumpkin patch back in 2008. My hubs & I took all the kids there to pick pumpkins to carve for Halloween. We took a hay ride, searched a huge patch for the perfect pumpkins, and the kids spent a lot of time in the bounce house. Now that they're all older, it's harder to find a single activity that they all enjoy, but I'm grateful for the times when we did manage to keep them all entertained at once. :)