The Gift to Give...

The best gift to give the kids of your worst enemy is (drum roll, please)...
Colored Bubbles by Crayola.
My mother sent these home in Easter baskets for the kids. I wonder what I could have done to her that was so horrendous to deserve this. She might as well have sent home a jug of paint and roller brush.
When I first saw them in the baskets, I didn't think much of it. Who would? Just bubbles, right? Perhaps you see just a hint of green or blue in the bubble while it's floating in the air. So when they wanted to open them after dinner, I told them to go out on the back deck. I stepped out to help CJ open his and pulled out the wand- it was very thick and dark blue. Before I could react he blew with enough force to take out a candle twenty feet away. What didn't coat my arm, hit WC. The left half of his face looked like he'd been hit with spray of blue paint.
WC, undeterred by the paint explosion, was happily cranking out bubbles of his own. Unfortunately the dye used to color the bubble solution made them too heavy to really float away and they were falling in mass numbers, splattering the wooden deck in green.
I'm still staring in disbelief at my blue arm when Jay steps out onto the deck and flips out at the stuff staining the deck. I snap back to reality and send them into the grass. He hooks up the hose and hands it to me on the deck, mumbles something about going to the store and disappears. Jo Jo the cat high tales it off the deck and over the fence- she isn't taking any chances. After several minutes of constant washing, what was left of the color splats isn't coming off.
I stop to take note of the color carnage in the back yard. CJ has morphed into a smurf and WC may have a bit of the Hulk going on. Their shirts and pants are polk-a-dotted with their respective color of bubbles. They are still wearing their polo shirts from church that morning. Note to self everything must be washed.
CJ smiles at me and teeth, tongue, chin and neck are all blue. Then stretching from his hand to his elbow is simply solid blue color. He can't come in house like this. I devised a plan. I went in and started running a tub of water.  And took two towels that were waiting to be washed and placed one on the floor just inside the back door and took the other with me.
The instructions were simple. Put down the bottle of paint (umm, I mean bubbles) and stand at the bottom of the porch steps. From there I hosed them both down, clothes and all. Then I had them strip off the wet clothes and then hosed them again. I told WC to step on the towel inside the door and dry his feet and get to the tub without touching anything.
Knowing that I would never get the same cooperation out of CJ, I used my second towel to wrap him like I was giving a cat medication. Then carried him to the bathroom and unrolled him right into the tub.
Everything else, including my shirt went into the washing machine.
On a positive note- it all came out of the clothes and off the body. The next morning my deck still had color spots but hopefully after several days of rain, it will eventually fade away.
Rarely, will I ever bad mouth a product. I feel that any product can have a few that are off and not inicative of the rest of them. I love Crayola's other products, I'd just purchased the sidewalk chalk. We love the crayons, paints, chalks and color wonder line. I'm generally impressed with the quality of their products.
Sometimes things are messy- I have two boys and I get that. You have to weigh the ratio of fun to clean up and in this case the clean up outweighed the amount of fun (for me).