eek!

While I was putting my makeup on at the dining room table one day, I told the girls that they could put some on too. Since I was nearby and since I assumed they would just play with the concealer and eyebrow brush like they normally do, I didn’t think I needed to keep a very close eye on their activity.

It's looking like I should have.


YIKES!

Things to Do This Summer #12: Get a snow cone!

Once again, this is actually something that was on my summer to-do list, not the kids’. It’s been on there the last couple of summers, but we could never seem to cross it off. Until now! Nothing says Summer like snow cones and baseball in 106-degree heat!

Once we discovered the snow cone truck at the ball field, the girls had to get one every time. Luckily Reid joined this team at the end of their season.


How we spent our time when we weren’t eating snow cones…

Creating an obstacle course


Lying under the bleachers watching a movie on mom’s phone


Being the only girl playing in the dirt with 4 boys


Oh, and look, a baseball game. Reid was filling in on this team, so he only played the last 2 tournaments. The first tournament was pitching machine, which is what he played earlier this summer, but the second was kid-pitch. This was his first experience at the kid-pitch level and in this league. It’s much more competitive than his league. They have real umps, real uniforms, and they follow all the regular rules of baseball. He did pretty good for a rookie! We were very proud of him. The fall league just began so we're anxious to see how he does. I think he's probably most excited about their team name--Prime, as in Optimus Prime, there's even a Transformers logo on the jersey--and the fact that they get a free drink from the concession stand after every game.

Things To Do This Summer #19: Go bowling!

Ok, so bowling wasn’t actually on our list of things to do this summer. But the kids earned a free game through the library's summer reading program so we decided to cash in on it. Any free activity I can get my hands on, I’m using! This game of bowling, though, was not at your typical beer and pizza type of bowling alley. No, this bowling alley is actually a bowling alley and lounge. Fancy! It’s downtown, and it’s kind of trendy…urban…swanky…what’s the word I’m looking for? I don’t know—obviously that tells you it’s not the kind of place a family of 6 usually frequents. Or at least not THIS family of 6. When you walk in, you are greeted by a hostess at a hostess stand. She walks you to one of only 10 lanes where you wait for your server to take your name and shoe size so she can set up the game and bring you your shoes. Then she comes back to take your lunch and drink order. Well it’s practically impossible to feed 4 little ones when you’re not at a proper table with chairs and a highchair so we just bowled and saved lunch for home! These photos were taken on my phone, so they’re not all great, but you get the idea.

Reid’s excited to see his score after letting loose of the the ball. He’s a pretty good little bowler. He’ll tell you it’s because of Wii bowling.  

Before we discovered the ramp-thing, it took so long for Blair’s roll to make it all the way down the lane that she just sat down to watch and wait. She is ecstatic that she hit a pin. Yes, I said a pin. (I was trying to get a picture of her socks—brown, turquoise, and purple zigzag stripes, pulled all the way up to her knees!)

Sloane could barely carry the ball, but with the help of the ramp-thing, she was able to knock out some pins!

 

After bowling, we stopped at the water fountain in the plaza just outside. I think the kids actually liked it better than the bowling!

I could not keep Blair and Sloane from climbing through the railing and trying to touch it. I don’t know how Sloane didn’t fall in!

 

“I command you, ‘Rise before me!’”

Elise wasn’t sure about the water spray at first.

But then thoroughly enjoyed it.

Basketball Trainer Girl

Blair is not what you would call “athletic.” She likes to occasionally play baseball, but other than that, she’s the one to whom we have to yell, “Blair, stop running or you’ll fall!” Seriously, we can’t allow her to run! And when she does, I brace myself, face cringed, for the fall that is soon to come. Well, the other day, she got some new athletic shorts. She assured us she would wear them but I know she just said that because they’re pink and because she wanted to buy something—anything—at the store. When we got home, she immediately put them on and felt the need to dress the part. So she grabbed some sweat bands, socks and tennis shoes (at least she’s wearing socks—she played her whole t-ball season without socks) and a basketball. You should have seen her bouncing that ball and leaping after it around the house—she looked like a jellyfish darting through rough waters. (If you can’t imagine what that looks like, just know it’s not graceful.) Anyway, sure enough, she quickly fell while being "a basketball trainer girl." (Does that lingo say "athlete" to you?) :) And she hasn’t worn the shorts since. Probably not fashionable enough for her girly tastes. I guess that’s okay. Someone has to be the princess.

A new Tooth Fairy customer!

We finally have another kid making exchanges with the Tooth Fairy at our house! Blair lost her first tooth on Friday (her bottom right)! It had been loose for nearly a month but not with much give to it. She talked about it all the time though, eager for the Tooth Fairy to finally come visit her instead of Reid for a change. Well, early last week, we noticed it went from barely moving to a full-on wiggle! After looking at the school lunch menu, we figured Friday’s hamburger would give it just the push it needed to fall out. Blair, the planner, wanted to prepare for every possible scenario surrounding the loss of this first tooth. “Pack extra napkins, because we only get one with our lunch and we’re not allowed to get up.” I assured her this is one time when she most definitely CAN get out of her seat at lunch. “Pack extra clothes in case it bleeds a lot and I get blood on my clothes and I need to change. I don’t want to wear bloody clothes.” You already have a change of clothes at school. “Tell my teacher that no one can sit next to me at lunch in case it falls out and so they won’t get blood on them.” Don’t worry, there won’t be THAT much blood. So on Friday morning, I gave her tooth a good wiggle, told her that if it didn’t come out at lunch, we’d work on it over the weekend and helped her on the bus. It hadn’t been 15 minutes when I got a call from the bus driver: “I just wanted you to know that Blair’s tooth fell out and we wrapped it in a napkin and put it in her backpack.” !!! She shared the details with me when she got home that afternoon…she was drinking from her water bottle when they hit a bump and the spout hit her tooth, knocking it out. It fell in her lap and it didn’t bleed a lot. She was even eager to show me the bloody tissues she had saved. We put the tooth under her pillow that night and the next morning she found 4 quarters and a shiny gold dollar coin! And she can’t wait to spend it!

I took a “before” picture on Thursday night.

And here it is after it fell out.

Things To Do This Summer #4: Make homemade ice cream!

I love making homemade ice cream. Well, actually, let me rephrase that: I love eating homemade ice cream. Growing up, I can't remember a family get together that didn't include homemade ice cream. I can remember hearing the machine churn and feeling like it took forever for it to be ready. It seemed like an all day process. But man, once it was done, you couldn't beat it. No store-bought variety stands a chance. (Well, Blue Bell's Natural Vanilla Bean is the closest there is, but it's still not "homemade".) And once you pour some chocolate syrup on it (from the Hershey's can, not the squeeze bottle--I don't know what the difference is but it makes all the difference), woooo, stand back! I still carry those memories around with me, and every summer, I--not the kids--add "make homemade ice cream" to our summer list in an effort to grab a piece of that nostalgia. However, the "day-long" process is engrained in my head, so I never get up the courage to make it. Seriously, who has time to spend all day nursing a loud, churning ice cream machine taking up your kitchen sink?? (except for when my parents are in town and I can talk them into making for me) :) Well, in reality, anyone who has made ice cream in a machine knows it doesn't actually take all day to make it. Forty-five minutes is probably more accurate (maybe even less). But I guess to an anxious kid, 45 minutes is all day. But back to my present dilemma, even though I know the reality, I still haven't talked myself into tackling it. But, I found the next best thing. My summer issue of Family Fun magazine had a fun idea--ice cream in a bag! Easy, fun, busy activity for the kids that ends in a tasty treat? Who can beat that!! And I finally get to cross it off our summer list.

Here's the scoop:
Combine 2 tablespoons sugar, 1 cup half and half, and a 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract in a pint-size ziplock bag and seal it tightly. Place 1/2 cup coarse salt (or table salt) in a gallon-size bag, then fill it halfway with ice cubes. Place the sealed smaller bag inside as well, and seal the larger bag. Shake the bags until the ice cream mixture hardens, about 5 minutes. (Feel the small bag to determine when it's done.) Take the smaller bag our of the larger one, and eat the ice cream right out of the bag!

Here it is "pre-shake"

Since it was really cold and our arms got tired of shaking the bag, we wrapped it in a towell and rolled the towel back and forth on the table until the ice cream was firm enough for our liking. (One piece of advice: before you open your small bag to eat the ice cream, rinse the bag off to get all the salt water off the opening of the bag.) 

Here's our final result! Yum!!

Things To Do This Summer #14: Go to the library

The kids love going to the library. That should be a great thing, right? Ha! Yeah right! With kids this age, it’s always a nightmare. Well, it was until this summer. In previous years, Blair always wanted to get on the computer, but didn’t know how to work it and required my help, which I couldn’t give because I was too busy chasing Sloane up and down the aisles reshelving the myriad of books that she had pulled out, all at the same time while trying to keep my eye on the kids and keep Reid’s noise level down. It was such a miserable time (for me) that I never looked forward to going. So when summertime rolled around this year, I avoided the library like the plague. However, I finally decided that I had to at least try to be a good mom and read with her kids over the summer. So guilt got the better of me and we decided to give it a try. I was very pleased to see that many of the challenges of last year had passed (that doesn’t mean they’re gone for good—we’ll be back there again next summer when Sloane and Elise are the ages that Blair and Sloane were last year—then the fun begins all over again), but for this year at least, it wasn’t too bad at all.

(…Well, unless you count the time Sloane peed through her clothes in the middle of the children’s section. What happened you ask? She seems to have a history of this! Well, she kept telling me she had to go to the bathroom, and thanks to the peeing-at-the-baseball-game experience, I knew I better take her to the bathroom before she let loose wherever she fancied. However, each time I tried to pull her away from the puzzles, she told me she didn’t have to go anymore. So I left her alone while I tended to Elise, who was loudly shrieking to get out of the stroller. But then I heard the strange sound of water running. I looked to see where it was coming from and there was Sloane peeing! Right there on the carpet! Thankfully, I think the librarian was too busy keeping a watchful eye on me feeding library-forbidden food and drink to the disruptive screaming baby to notice that my 3-year old was peeing. But with a 3-year old, you can’t just tell them to stop and expect them to stop mid-stream. They’re not capable of such fine skills. I quickly discovered that the only way I could get her to pause was to nudge her enough to distract her from the task at hand. So there I was—in a panicked, yet hushed, and trying very hard to be inconspicuous--whisper, “Stop! Stop peeing!” while I repeatedly poked her in the abdomen and frantically gathered up my things to rush her to the restroom, begging “Don’t pee, don’t pee, don’t pee” the whole way. Yes, fun times at the library, indeed.) 

During the less eventful visits, Blair and Reid liked playing the computer, so that occupied a good thirty minutes. I began to notice the common theme of Blair’s book choice was that they all had pink spines. So that’s how she deemed a book worthy of checking out. 

Sloane liked standing on the step stool and playing the puzzles. She seems to be over the fascination of pulling out handfuls of books every 10 seconds. And when I could no longer silence Elise with water and crackers while being strapped in the stroller, I’d let her crawl around. I did have to constantly chase her and keep her from banging on everyone’s keyboard, standing in chairs, and climbing on tables, but luckily, she usually wasn’t out of the stroller long enough to become too frustrating.

And when it was all said and done, the kids earned some great prizes through the library’s summer reading program, so it was worth the effort.

Things To Do This Summer #18: Feed the ducks at the park!

What you don’t see is that on the visit prior to this one, the geese actually nipped each of the kids as the kids held out bread. It doesn’t draw blood, it’s more of a squeeze, but it still freaked the kids out. So that is why the kids are standing on the park bench…they were literally backed onto the bench by the friendly—and hungry!—geese. 

From an earlier visit this summer:

First things first, the cutest thing ever—a baby duckling!

The only thing cuter than one baby duck is 18 baby ducks!

Apparently, they like saltines, which is all we had to feed them when we ran out of bread and the kids started raiding my diaper bag.


And you can't go to the park without time to play!

Elise loves herself a swing!

“I told you, I don’t have anything.”

"Look, now I have bread!"



"Ouch, you bit me!"

We saw a kid fishing so we watched him a while. He was quite successful in this little pond. Even almost caught Reid when the line he was pulling got stuck on something in the water and then suddenly gave way flying back onto the shore. One second before that (like, literally, one second) I had told the kids to back up. It saved the girls from getting hooked, and Reid just caught the line in his face, no hook. Needless to say, we kept our distance after that.