There was plenty of nonsense at the beach house. Sophie spent a fair amount of time catching Honey Graham Oh’s in her mouth.

This weekend my family and I took a trip to St. George Island, just about an hour and a half away from home. We stayed in a beach house and rented bicycles and collected sand dollars and wore flip-flops and ate too much birthday cake and had a great old time. I’m still sore today (Monday) from laughing so hard at Jake, who is seven and quite possibly the bossiest person in the world. Kris said Jake’s theme for the weekend was “I won’t take no for an answer.”

The first thing Bun and I did was play Liv dolls with Sophie (Kris and Mom were doing a puzzle). Matt sat nearby waiting for the perfect opportunity to annoy us–and he found it amazingly quickly too. He strapped a tiny bicycle helmet over a doll’s face and said, “Hey Sophie, it’s pretty cool they come with Halloween costumes, huh? I mean, this Jason one is pretty cool, right?”

“Shut up!” Sophie cried. “Give me that! Give me my doll!”

Meanwhile, Jake was sitting on the couch doing mad libs with Rob.

“A type of liquid,” Rob prompted him.

“Tee-tee!” Jake cried with glee.

Rob and Jake did a mad lib together. Then Jake started on his own. He had a Club Penguin book of mad libs, and he was doing it all by himself, filling in the blanks with his hilariously bad handwriting and using the same words over and over: poo, pooey, fart, tee-tee, dumb, stupid, crap, crappy, Barney, Barbie, moron, morons, and idiots.

After he finished filling in each page, he’d say in his very loudest, happiest voice, “So, do you guys want me to read this one? Do you want me to read it to you?!”

And then he’d read us an entire page of penguin-themed nonsense, with some insults to Barney and Barbie thrown in.

Jake is an excellent reader, but he had a bit of difficulty making out his own ridiculous handwriting. Over and over, the words “Barney” and “Barbie” proved particularly challenging to decipher:

“ . . . And then the stupid waiter brought them a crappy pizza topped with Barney, no Barbie, no Barney . . . !”

There was one page about pirate penguins. Jake read it aloud (of course). “Shiver me crappers!” he cried in his happiest voice. “It’s a crap’s life for me!”

“Shiver me crappers,” Matt mumbled. “I might actually use that one.”

Jake came to the end of the page (we had listened to literally dozens of pages). “And that’s all I have so far,” he said apologetically.

“So fart?” Matt said.

Jake nodded, grinning, and got to work on the next page.

Meanwhile, Sophie and Bun and I were still playing Liv dolls. Sophie was getting mad at the way Bun and I were dressing the girls. “Leslie, why did you put those slippers on her?” Sophie cried.

“Oh, I thought they were clogs,” I said sheepishly.

“Why do you even play with Queen Commander?” Rob asked me. “You know you can’t do anything right.”

“Oh, but it’s fun trying,” I said. “I mean, maybe someday . . .”

Sophie kept getting “ticked off.”

“Okay, Sophie,” Bun said, “why are you ticked off?”

“Because Leslie and you are jacking up my dolls!”

She got especially steamed when I dressed Jaden in a pair of knee-high boots with shorts.

Matt was really bugging Sophie too—but he was doing it on purpose.

“Um, Sophie, do you have a little pillow we can put on the hammock?” I asked, and Matt threw me a packet of desiccant he’d found in the crack of the couch.

“Not that!” Sophie cried, and she threw the desiccant across the room.

Matt asked Sophie if there were any boy Liv dolls.

“There’s one,” Sophie answered in a perfunctory sort of way (she was busy dressing her doll). “Jake.”

“Oh, yeah,” Matt said. “I’ve seen him. Looks kind of like Bieber? . . . Now do you say it ‘Beeber’ or ‘Biber’? I’m never sure. . . .”

Sophie threw a peanut butter cup at him.

Jake flossing his very far-apart teeth . . . in the living room . . .