In loco parentis

ith the emphasis on the loco…  In a couple of hours, we’re off to the airport to pick up the Nephews for their first proper solo visit (is it solo when there’s two of them? duo visit?). We’ve had Nephew #1 stay once before, but that was only for a night, and Dad had brought him up to Christchurch and was staying with a friend just out of town, so we knew we had super-grandparent powers to call on if it all got too scary.  But this time it’s two kids, no parents or grandparents, for 5 whole days… it seemed like such a good idea when we invited them (or rather, when they invited themselves… round about the time I introduced them to Minecraft and casually mentioned we have it set up for multiplayer – the next question was “when can we come and visit?” :-)) but now I’m ever so slightly nervous.  What do pre-teen boys eat? (the answer, according to Mum, is everything in sight) What if they get bored? (dumb question, we’re geeks with a house full of computers and games consoles and almost as many cool toys as they have themselves!) What if they misbehave? (oh yeah, that’s right – we’re the ones who can restrict access to all the cool stuff = ultimate power :-)) What if there’s an earthquake and the house falls down on them? … Are you starting to see why I have no children of my own? Taking responsibility for other human beings is really not my strong point!
But seriously, we’re really looking forward to the visit.  They’re such fun kids, and totally share our love of all things geeky.  Nephew #2 has a very similar sense of humour to MrPloppy, and Nephew #1 and I can talk science for hours, so even if we just stayed at home and played computer games all week we’d have fun.  But we’ve got loads of ideas for fun places to go and things to do, so I reckon our only real problem will be fitting everything in.