Ian's no-good, very scary, not funny practical joke

Imagine you are 9 years old, home by yourself, at night, and it's dark outside.  Now imagine that after being home for about 1.5 hours, you start to hear voices come from your bedroom.  Men's voices.  And imagine, you are downstairs, not near your room and can't really make out what the voices are saying, just that there is definitely voices and its coming from your bedroom.

This exact scenario happened to Samantha the other night.  Unbeknownst to Jeff and me, Ian set her Alexa to start playing the "Hamilton" soundtrack at 8:00pm.  Can I just say I would've been creeped out at my age, let alone only 9 years old.

When I heard what happened, I felt so bad for Sam.  And I was very upset with Ian.  This was so not cool of him. 

Apparently Sam got even.  When she got confirmation that it was Ian behind this so-called joke and not the boogeyman, she went into action.  Very quickly, Sam went into Ian's bedroom and took a bunch of his stuff and hid it around the house.  She wasted no time knowing that Ian and Jeff could be home any minute.  Unfortunately for Ian (but for fortunate for Sam), she couldn't remember where she put some of his stuff, including his iPad.  Ha!  I got a call to remotely activate from my iPhone an alarm on his iPad so it would make a sound and they could locate it. 

I am not sure if Sam managed to level the playing field, but I give her mad props to being creative under pressure and do what she could, given what she had to work with.

Needless to say, Ian will not being doing this again to his sister.

The joke's on you.

We've had our fair share of snow days and delayed openings this Winter.  The kids don't lack those bonus days when they wake up and find out "Guess what? There's no school today!"  You may have even heard their squeals of delight all the way to your house.

Because these snow days have become all too common place, we've now taken to playing pranks on each other.  It's gotten pretty funny when we all had a hand in it and didn't realize the other was doing the same thing.

Here's a classic example of what I am referring to:

Recently, we found out the night before there would be a 2 hour delay the next morning.  Both kids were still awake and we were approaching their bedtime.  We intentionally did not tell Sam so she would go to bed at her normal time. We did tell Ian so he wouldn't set his alarm and could sleep in.  By 5:15am the next morning, the county reassessed the roads and the announcement was made that there would be no school. 

The next morning:
I see Ian as soon as he wakes-up and tell him, "Guess what, the county changed their mind and you have a full day of school today."

Ian:  What?

Me:  Yep, you have school today.

Sam then wakes-up (remember, she has no idea there was even a delay happening).

Ian to Sam:  We have no school today (trying to be funny).

Sam:  Yay!!!!

Ian looks at me and smiles like I am in on his joke.

It was the funniest conversation as we were all trying to have a little fun with each other.  It took a few minutes to convince the kids that there was in fact no school. 

Sam's most awesome prank

Sam did something that had us all laughing.  It was simply awesome of her to think of this, execute flawlessly!, sit back and watch the results.  Pure brilliance!

Each year, the night before the kids' birthdays, I wait for them to fall asleep and go across the street to Safeway.  I buy the biggest balloon I can find.  I'm talking like the balloons that cost $16 each.  I take it home, sneak it in to their room (while they are sleeping), so when they wake up in the morning (on their birthday), the first thing they see is this crazy-big balloon wishing them a happy birthday.  I've done this every year for each of the kids, since they were born.  Just something to make their day a bit more special. 

The balloons last for a good month after their birthdays.  So it is floating around the house, and can be found in various rooms depending on what the kids do with it.  A few days after Sam's birthday, Ian is downstairs playing on the Xbox and Jeff & I are sitting in the living room chatting on the couch.  Sam comes running up to us, with her hand on her mouth trying to keep the laughter from erupting out of her body.

Sam (whispering to me):  You are not going to believe what I just did...giggle, giggle.

Me:  What did you do?

Sam:  I clipped the balloon to the back of Ian's shirt. And then I ran away.  He doesn't know....giggle, giggle.

Me:  Oh, that's awesome Sam.... giggle, giggle.

Jeff (realizing something is going on):  What did you do Sam?

Sam (whispering to Jeff):  I clipped the balloon to the back of Ian's shirt...giggle...giggle.

Jeff:  Hehehehehehe.

Ian:  (FINALLY figuring out something is going on):  What happened to my shirt?

Ian is now running up the stairs towards us, while the balloon (this really, really, really big balloon) is trailing him.   Jeff, Sam and I bust out laughing.  Ian is completely clueless.

Gosh I love this girl and that she thought this up all on her own.  So incredibly hilarious!

This is a picture of the balloon that Sam attached to the back of Ian's shirt.