Week's Vacation

Right before Adam was going to take his vacation, we found out that my aunt and uncle that live in Australia were in town, and that my aunt that lives in Boston was coming to town as well. Perfectly they were all going to be in town together, when we had free time. The last time they were all together was 22 years ago! I just had to get us out there! So we packed up the family, stayed at my dad's house, and got to visit with family. It was an amazing 3 days. Lots of laughs, food, drinks, and memories. On the way out there we stopped at White Castle. I have grown up with the stuff, and gotten Adam hooked on it. Well where we live, there are none. So we make special trips (like Valentine's day past years), and we needed to stop for a special Fathers Day lunch! We came back home the night before L's birthday.

 The day after his birthday, I woke up to find a quiet house, and a note. Adam and the kids were gone about 5 hours that day, and they came home with a small blue gill in a juice jug. D named him Sprinkles and L named the worm inside the jar George III. We set them free at the pond by our apartment. The kids want to go visit them every day.

 Another morning, after breakfast, we put together these fun wooden dinosaur puzzles that Adam picked up for the kids for their birthday. It took some time, some tears, but we got them all together!

And later on that day we made "clean mud". You simply tear up 1 whole roll of toilet paper (that takes some time), grate in 3 bars of soap, add glitter, and hot water, and mix! It was a very strange texture, but the kids really had fun playing in this.

We capped the week with having friends over for a cookout today. What a fantastic week vacation, I know tomorrow will be difficult for all of us to get back into our daily life.

Gone Fishing

My kids LOVE to go fishing for real, but there never seems to be a good time to go.  So last month I picked up some donut magnets at a craft store here in town. Adam asked what I wanted to do with them, and I didn't have anything planned right away, but knew they would come in handy.  Well, cut to this week.  I had all my foam sheets out already because I was making fins for mermaid dolls (more on that next week!). Then it hit me, how about fish shapes out of the foam, and slide paper clips onto their "face" end! I'm sure I had seen this on some other blog before, but can't really remember where.  So I sat down, free handed a whole bunch of fish, put paper clips on, and had the kids get dressed.  The kiddie pool was still full of water, and was kind of dirty, so I figured it was the perfect location to go fishing in.  I was just planning on dumping the water out later that day anyway!  The kids and I scouted out 2 nice size sticks to act as fishing poles. Our backyard use to look like a forest, but since last summer had 5 trees removed.  Luckily we have had some bad storms lately, and trees around us are loosing sticks like crazy!  I have a ball of hemp twine that I used to tie the magnet to the sticks, and sent the kids off to the pool.  They had soooo much fun doing this.  I think we fished all the fish out about 4 times.  By the 4th time they were pretending to be in a competition with Tom and Jerry!

Afterwards we drained the pool of water, and clipped the fish to our art work drying line.  This made for a very fun morning, and I think I may add it to the fun games I have ready for L and D's birthday party this weekend!