Somehow I’ve managed to survive most of winter break with a few remaining shards of sanity. That’s not to say my children haven’t tried their best to break me. Considering the condition of my house and their things, “broken” seems to be their preferred state.

At least a few of their toys have stood the test of time. A couple of years ago, I found a four-foot tall Darth Vader figure on super duper clearance after Christmas and gave it to First Born for his February birthday. Darth has been an unwilling prop for of quite a few pranks in our house.

For instance, one April Fools Day, he and Yoda were hanging out in First Born’s bed reading Star Wars books together. Or there was the time Darth was lurking in First Born’s closet in case I went in to search for contraband. (Luckily First Born was at school when I found him that time, because my scream would have been far too rewarding for First Born.)

Or there was the time I hid him in our bathroom to try to freak out the Warden when he was coming home late from his monthly poker game. I ended up freaking out myself, because I forgot Darth was in there when I stumbled into the bathroom later that night before the Warden even got home. *sigh* It probably wouldn’t have worked anyway, because I doubt it would have even fazed him. He would have just rolled his eyes and muttered things about how weird his wife was and questioned his reasons for marrying me in the first place.

Darth came out again the other day when Jiminy Cricket, his little brother and their mom were over. All was going so well — the littles were in the living room playing all things Paw Patrol, the bigs were upstairs doing stinky boy things and we moms were sitting in the kitchen enjoying a break from them. Suddenly we hear screaming from the littles, then the sound of our front door opening and them running outside yelling, “Darth Vader is outside!!”

Now most other moms may have been alarmed. Not Jiminy’s mom. In case you don’t remember, she survived The Epic Sleepover and has five kids of her own. The woman’s seen things and lived to tell about them. She merely raised an eyebrow and we strolled out to the front to see what was going down.

Here’s what we saw:

And then here’s what our neighbors or anyone driving by saw:

I’m just grateful no one called the cops and that our neighbors still speak to us.