I Think I am Doing This Wrong

The Plan:

1.) Go to the Library.
2.) Go to Maggie Moo's Ice Cream to get the kids free ice cream cones.

No cost. Free. Gratis.

The Actuality:

1.) Go to the Library.
2.) Fight with the children about why they can't get their regular treats at Maggie Moo's. (Because that isn't what is FREE!)
3.) Arrive at Maggie Moo's to find that they aren't participating in the free ice cream cones.
4.) Silently fume.
5.) Purchase $10 of ice cream for the children. It would be wrong to take them to the door of the ice cream place and leave.
6.) Not so silently complain to the high-school aged person who took my money. He didn't care.
7.) Decide to take a quick trip into Barnes & Noble - ONLY for a guidebook for things to do in Washington DC on our trip this weekend.
8.) Deflect Tater's request for a CD course in Italian.
9.) Deflect Sprout's request for a map of Prague.
10.) Find guidebook...and map.
11.) Deflect request for snacks. (We JUST had not-free ice cream!!)
12.) Get suckered into buying the "Wimpy Kid Do-It-Yourself" Book for BOTH children.
13.) RUN to the parking lot escaping any other purchases.

Total Planned Cost: $0
Total Actual Cost: $50

I am TOTALLY doing this wrong.

Economic Stimulus

This weekend we weren't so much creative as we were rabid consumers. Gotta do what we can to kick start that economy, right?

The kids had a four day weekend, and we pretty much squandered it.

Saturday, for Valentine's Day, we went to Tater's basketball game (which he was GREAT in!). The kids built an enormous town of Littlest Pet Shops, and a skate park with their Tech Decks. So they played, and of course, watched TV. Then went out to dinner.

Sunday, the kids and I went to see Hotel for Dogs with some friends, which the kids really loved. Of course, I cried...which is sort of embarrassing during a kids movie. But the kids are used to me being an embarrassment. After the movie the kids played video games with their friends for several hours.

Monday, we did nothing that I can remember. Played some games, watched too much TV. We tried to go outside and play. The sun was shining, the neighbors were asking us to come out. I forcibly threw the children out the door and about 30 seconds later realized it was COLD!!! So that lasted about 30 minutes before I was begging them to come back inside. Brrrrrr.

The most notable moment on Monday came when Sprout, when faced with her lovely dinner of homemade soup, asked why I hated her. Good times...

Yesterday we had big plans to go snow tubing at Blue Mountain. Of course, when we were getting everything organized for the trip on Monday evening I realized that they didn't start their tubing sessions until 4PM on weekdays. And with today as a school day, that just wasn't going to work. Boo.

So tubing will have to wait for the weekend. Instead we went bowling. Then out to lunch. Then shopping for a big new TV. And then shopping again for a HSM3 DVD, which we then watched on the new TV.

Total screen time? WAY too much. Gotta get back to being creative before my children turn into big lifeless blobs!

Gotta Know When to Fold 'em

Just for the record, I am not a huge fan of origami. Or, to be more accurate, I am not generally any good at doing origami. And I am not a huge fan of being bad at things.

Something about the precision and the patience required makes it a not-great fit for me.

My mother-in-law is an origami master. She made me a beautiful box that I still can't believe didn't come from a fancy store somewhere. And she has frequently given us books of origami paper and the instructions to make animals and bugs and things. And after yet another confidence-draining session attempting to make elephants and crickets, I generally give up.

But today, faced with a long afternoon with Zach and Cody or getting ourselves together to do some sort of activity, I found this super easy idea that results in a origami "frisbee".

We gathered up all of the pretty papers we had given up on and made these. I made one myself to confirm that it was, in fact, as simple as it appeared. And then each of the kids made their own, with very little intervention. Sprout's is pictured at the top, Tater's at the bottom. Quite fab, I think!

To make your own, get 8 square pieces of paper. I think these are 5 x 5 or 6 x 6. The pretty ones make it more fun, but anything would work.

Put a piece of paper on the table and fold it in half to make a rectangle shape. Put the folded edge at the top. Take the left top corner and fold it down diagonally so that the edges are lined up. Then fold the right bottom corner up the same way. This will result in a parallelogram shape.
If you look, the right side will have a little "pocket" where the corner was folded up, while the left side will have an open-edge.

See the little pocket there? The other side isn't hooked together...

Do exactly the same folds with the other pieces of paper. So you have 8 little parallelograms.

Take one of the folded papers, folded side in the back and the "pocket" side facing to the right. Take the "un-pocket" side of a second piece and tuck it into the "pocket" of the first - they should fit right together.

Then take the next piece and tuck it in...go in a clockwise direction - pocket to un-pocket until the 8th one hooks the whole thing together. You can put a little glue to hold each piece together if you are actually going to try to throw it like a frisbee. They would also be pretty mounted on another piece of paper as a piece of artwork.

These would even fit my "kids art as real art" decorating theme. I like to take the more abstract pieces of kids art and frame them for my house.

They are not particularly aerodynamic. But they are pretty! Give it a try!

Down Time

This weekend, especially today, was filled with a glorious overabundance of nothingness.

Yesterday, Tater had a party at 1:15 and we just barely got out of our pajamas in time to get there. Sprout and I had lunch and did some shopping while he was at the party. Both kids procured yo-yos for themselves and have been yo-yo-ing ever since...

Last night Sprout had a party, so Tater and I had dinner with friends.

Today we started watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets at 10AM and were still in pajamas at 12:45 for lunch...the kids never left the house...yo-yo-ing...TV watching...rotting brains oozing everywhere...but it was REALLY nice to have no agenda. Just a lot of recharging.

Not fun exactly, but good anyway...

Giggling in the Rain

Apparently rain is very entertaining to children. Especially if you let them go out and play in it.

A couple of years ago on a summer day when there had been a rain shower, we put on our swimsuits and rain boots and set off on a quest for puddles.

Unfortunately (for this particular venture) our street has excellent drainage, so no satisfactory puddles were available. Luckily, there is a large church nearby with a huge parking lot which had several huge and excellent puddles.

The kids proceeded to stomp and jump and splash and have a heck of a good time. I think the fact that they are generally NOT allowed to jump in puddles combined with their overall love of wetness combined to make this a super fun expedition.

I saw this same joyousness repeated this evening watching four kids, ages 3 to 8, playing in the water running off of the roof of the ice cream shop. They ran back and forth through the rain drops. They stood under the corner of the roof where there was a stream coming down, joyfully informing us on a regular basis that they were GETTING WET!

It is hard sometimes as a grown-up person who sees the rain and thinks about wet shoes and frizzed hair and rearranged plans to realize that it can be terribly fun, if you just let it!

GNO

Sprout and I had a Girl's Night Out last night. Mike was out and Tater was sleeping over at Nana's so we went out on the town!

First stop, bowling. We had a free pass for 2 games. Sprout wanted to work on her technique - concerned that her little brother is getting to be a better bowler. Competitive little critter.

Then, Dairy Queen. I suggested that we just have ice cream for dinner (scandalous!) but she really wanted a hot dog. So we did both. She had a Cotton Candy Blizzard, which I think is horrifying. I had Girl Scout Thin Mint, which was quite delightful.

Then, Wall-E. Which as I am sure everyone already knows is super cute, despite very little dialogue. She recounted the entire story line to Mike and Tater today, blow-by-blow, punctuated with lots of "And then it was funny when"s. So I guess she liked it.

Then two chapters of Harry Potter (we are getting to the end of The Deathly Hallows!)

She is pretty fun to hang out with. I made a good one!

Budget-blowing Day

The Duck Bus was fun. The kids enjoyed the "quackers" and the water portion of the tour (although I think they were a little nervous about how close to the water we were - I know I was!) I think the historical portions of the tour were lost on Tater, but Sprout remembered a lot of things from school and her previous trip to Philadelphia with Nana and PopPop.

While we were right in the Visitor's Center we made a quick visit to the Liberty Bell. Then a walk to lunch at the City Tavern. Which was a budget buster and not all that well-received by the kids (although they claimed to have one of the best children's menus around). Then we walked back and visited the old Post Office and Ben Franklin's old neighborhood.

We were home around 3:30 and the kids needed to decompress and watched some TV. They were concerned that we hadn't done a "Barrel of Chipmunks" activity so Sprout helped me make Smores, and then they played a modified version of the Penny Toss game after dinner.

They just put a tupperware container on the floor and tossed coins into it. Strangely, this entertained them for almost 20 minutes before they started throwing the coins at each other.

The rule of the day was to not get lost on our trip - not fun, but at least effective!

Have a great weekend!

It's Hard to be Fun

I have been home with my kids for 10 days straight. This is something that usually happens on vacations, where there are built-in things to do.

This summer, since I am now "self-employed" we have less camp activity and more stay-at-home days.

The first few days I was pretty good. We did a mosaic (broke tiles with a hammer and everything), we made a ramp out of paper towel tubes and rolled marbles through it, we made fingerprint pictures, we painted suncatchers. But the last few days I am losing steam.

The weather is yuck. The TV is easy. But I do want to DO something and get engaged with the kids.

This is why I am thinking that the "Barrel of Chipmunks" idea really has some legs. If I had a print-out right now with a list of things to do, that were pretty easy, but fun, I think we wouldn't be struggling for something to do.

Not that crafts are always the answer. But sometimes fun cooking could be. And sometimes a game to play or activity to do would be fantastic. And digging through the huge stack of books that is sitting in my office right now is pretty daunting...although I guess that's what we'll do.

But someday soon, I will have a plan. And we will all be having more fun!