Because we can

Having no adults around is a lot of fun. It's also so much easier to do life without them. Danielle called me at work to say she wanted to meet two of her friends at dinner time without Alex. So she dumped Al at home and then went out.

When I got home Alex was laying on the couch watching tv, with clean laundry in folded piles on the floor. She'd made a chocolate pudding pie while she was home alone. Alex ate some of the pie. Out of the pie dish, not from a plate.

Aunt Elaine had this weird thing about feet and shoes. Maybe it was because she never showered, she assumes everyone's feet are filthy. So Aunt Elaine never wanted us to take our shoes or socks off. BUT. If we'd just vacuumed or cleaned the floors then she made us take off our shoes before coming through the door so we wouldn't ruin the floors. Now we can take off our shoes or keep them on however we want. Except that Josh always had to take his shoes off right when he walked in the front door and he wants everyone to do that here. But at least with Josh, if we leave in the morning and then have to run back in because we forgot something, nobody is going to scream at us about not having taken off our shoes for the 10 seconds we're in the house.

We yell to each other from other rooms sometimes, because Aunt Elaine isn't here to punish us for making noise. We also spend almost no time during the day in our bedrooms. It's really nice this way.