Mean tricks to play on children

Yesterday we had a surprise birthday party for Mark, who turns 18 this week. My mother-in-law brought over her famous Swedish cake and we lit candles and sang as Mark blew out the candles. Funny thing was she had one of those re-lighting candles. They're totally annoying as an adult, but we showed Andy that it relit itself and he was shocked. "Oh no!" he cried. We encouraged him to blow it out, which he did (with our help). We praised him for a job well done and then, poof!, the candle was back on. "Oh no!" he cried once again. It went on like this for probably 6 or 7 minutes. I wished I'd had the video on because it was so funny time and time again to see his complete shock and surprise that the candle was back on. By the end of it, we were all in tears from laughing so hard.

The Christmas tree came down this weekend. I first moved it to the front yard and now it's out by the curb. Every day, several times a day, Andy races into the living room and shouts, "Gone! Christmas gone!" Then he has to peer out the window to look for it in the front yard. I started coming up with a lame story about how the tree has to go back to the North Pole and how it has to wait outside for Santa to come get it and take it home until next year. He's not old enough to get Santa, but it seemed like a better thing to say than, "Kid, Christmas is over and the tree is dead, really dead. In fact, it's so dead it's crispy and we have to get it outside before it spontaneously combusts." I have now told him the story about Santa coming to get the tree so many times that I now have a nice mental image of Santa on his sleigh riding through the neighborhoods collecting all the Christmas trees so they can relax and get bigger for next year. It just sounds better than going to the landfill to be turned into mulch.