At the start of summer, I made a list of things I wanted our family to experience. There’s an incredible park in the St. Louis Area called the Laumeier Sculpture Park, and it was high on my list. I had heard about it but never visited it until today. We had a blast running around the park seeing the sculptures and enjoying the weather. Here are photos from our great day together.
Sometimes I take life too seriously. When I get myself caught up in all the details of life, my vision gets clouded by all the “have-tos” and not on the “want-tos.” I need to laugh a lot more than I do!
On this day, I did a LOT of laughing and it felt good!
We participated in the International Pillow Fight Day this year. Apparently it’s the second annual pillow fight, organized locally by a group called STL Improv Anywhere. I can’t tell you HOW MUCH FUN we had!
I giggled like a crazy person, running around whacking the stuffing out of random strangers.
My kids ran after complete strangers and whacked the stuffing out of them too.
And my family whacked each other pretty well too!
Sometimes I wonder where exactly the human race is headed, but on days like this it’s nice to know we can all have a common goal of laughing and whacking each other over the head!
July is over, and here’s how we spent it.
Mostly, July will be remembered for being HOT. There were record hot temps (100+) for almost two weeks straight. Ugh.
July was also the Battle of the Fruit Flies. I started keeping a running tally of how many of the flippin’ flies I killed. I finally broke 100 on day 15. ONE HUNDRED of the annoying little jerks are gone forever. Yeehaw! I started by chasing them with a fly swatter. That didn’t work too well. Then I set a trap for them. I put some cantaloupe guts in a bowl and covered it with plastic wrap and poked holes in the wrap. They started congregating on the bowl. I would sneak up and use Jackson’s Backyard Safari Outfitters bug vacuum to suck ‘em up into the holding tube. Then I walked outside and released them. At one point, I captured nine at a time. After a week or so of this, I moved on to using the vacuum cleaner. Yeah, man! That eats ‘em up way faster. I got 13 in one fell swoop once.
About once a year, we take a trip to our local Six Flags amusement park. Since the heat was unbearable, we decided to arrive early and do the rides first, then eat lunch in the car and change into swimsuits. Then we moved on to the attached water park, which we had never visited before. It was lots of fun… until the one and ONLY thunderstorm of July just happened to ruin it. While seeking shelter in a nearby souvenir shop, we appeased the kids with ice cream before we headed home. It was fun while it lasted!
July 4th came, and the local cities and towns cancelled all fireworks shows because there has been a lack of rain. Our neighbors bought sparklers and shared them with us, and I got to take some of my favorite photos of the year. It’s like making art with my camera!
On one of our hot days (there was a LONG stretch where we didn’t play outside at all), Katie found some rolls of colored tape and decided to make Jackson a car track. (Yes, sometimes they can be loving siblings!)
On a lazy Saturday morning, we attended a kids’ workshop at Home Depot. The kids got to make a wooden moving truck then paint it.
This next photo makes my mommy heart swell with joy. Katie asked my boss if she could teach the kids in the Preschool room at church one Sunday morning. So he got her a script, we practiced and memorized it for days on end, and she got a chance to co-lead the kids. This was so awesome because she has been so self-conscious lately and won’t EVER do anything that puts her on display for others. I was proud of her for choosing to get outside her comfort zone and help lead other kids to Jesus. Attagirl!
The kids’ favorite pool toy went missing for two weeks. They forgot it at the pool and they were sad. I figured it was a lesson in responsibility, until we found another family playing with it later on. The spot where our name had been was scratched off. I asked the mom if they bought it, and she said yes. (This model hasn’t been available for a few years.) So I gave it back to her. But the next day at the pool (when this same family was there), the Toypedo was left when the family went home. Humph. I took it home and was planning to CARVE our name into it, but decided to take the high road. I am holding on to it until we see the family again, then I will personally return it to them so they don’t lose their Toypedo again. To avoid future ownership questions, I have burned our name into the other mini Toypedoes we own.
I took the kids on a day trip to nearby Washington, Missouri. We visited a friend of mine from church, who is displaying some of my photography and Katie’s Living Water bracelets (for sale) at her print shop. We poked around Washington: saw the corn cob pipe museum, the river and a caboose, had lunch and ice cream, and drove trains at the train store.
We went to a Babaloo concert at the library. This is a crazy local kids’ entertainer who sings all kinds of songs about things that make kids laugh (underwear, dancing, monsters in the bedroom). He ended the show by giving each kid a five gallon bucket and a pair of drumsticks. The kids went nuts banging their drums, and the patrons ran screaming from the library. (Just kidding.)
For one week of July, Katie went to her first LONG overnight camp. I wrote about drop off here, and a photo in this blog post shows the joy of our reunion. The day we picked her up, something cool happened. One of the girls at camp asked Jesus into her heart, and she was baptized on the day the parents picked everyone up. I love seeing baptisms!
Katie got a butterfly kit for Christmas, and we finally got our caterpillars delivered by mail. They made cocoons and emerged a few days later. It’s fun to watch them change and become something new – a great lesson for the kids.
We’ve noticed two hummingbirds in our back yard. They are VERY hard to photograph (especially through dirty windows!), but I did manage one nice photo.
Dan’s cousin is having a garage sale, and we are now the proud owners of a second LoveSac. We love our first one (even though Dan says it looks like college décor), and the second one looks great in our basement.
July ended with a bang. One of my high school best friends drove from Georgia and brought her family for vacation. We got to visit the best St. Louis has to offer, starting with the City Museum. You can’t go wrong with a downtown building full of slides and caves and tree houses and mosaics and upcycled craziness and an indoor circus and a mini train and a skate-less skateboard park and a GIANT praying mantis and a ferris wheel on top! It’s Dr. Seuss meets Where The Wild Things Are with a bit of The Hobbit thrown in.
They visited the Arch and took a riverboat cruise on the day I worked (and my Jackson went to school).
We spent their last day in town at Grant’s Farm where we got to see (and touch) Clydesdale’s, watch an elephant show AND a bird show, see bald eagles, feed goats, get close to a red-tailed hawk and even closer to a hungry camel.
Every year when spring is ending and I think about the upcoming summer and what cool things we might do, I always have these big plans and ideas. Usually the heat sucks lots of the fun ideas out of me, but I can look back at this July and say we did a LOT and made great memories. What a fun summer!
Luckily, one of the latest fads involves mismatched socks – or mitchmatched socks, as Jackson calls them. That might work for the kids, but what’s an adult to do when his sock mate goes missing? Donate it to the kids’ toy stash and play Sock Tag!
How do you play Sock Tag? Each player gets a sock then stuffs it down the waistband of their pants with the foot of the sock hanging out over their behind.
The players start off in a mad dash to try and steal other players’ socks.
When they look out the window and see your kid running around with a sock hanging out of her pants, the neighbors will either think you’ve lost your mind OR decide to join in the fun!
Oh, this is too much fun and I had to share. Have you heard of the Muppet Whatnot Workshop at FAO Schwarz? You can make your own *real* Muppet. Sweet! What do you think of the Muppet I made resembling my hunky husband?
The price is $100, so I don’t think we’ll be ordering any Muppets for our house. But it’s a fun website to play around with!
I saw this post on Ohdeedoh and loved it. Erica’s Bloggity Blog had the fun idea to use glow sticks in the bathtub. At dinner last night, I bribed the kids to finish their meal by promising a big surprise in the bath. They could hardly stand the suspense, and started guessing immediately.
Katie’s guess? “Oh! It’s water that turns into chocolate!” Uh, no. And eeww anyway!
Jackson’s guess was ice cream. In the tub. Hmm… not a bad idea, actually. Maybe we’ll try that another day. Next, Katie asked for TV in the tub, and I told her no way. That led to us promising her that on her tenth birthday, she can take a bath with tons of bubbles, and we’ll wheel a TV in for her to watch while she eats a big bowl of ice cream. She squealed with excitement over this idea, and made me pinky swear that I will remember to do that when she turns ten.
Anyway, back to the story. I bathed the kids then made them recite the bath time rules (no splashing, no standing up – due to our slippery bath – and no dumping water out of the tub). Then I cracked open a pack of glow sticks and let them go to town. I couldn’t get my camera to focus well in the dark, and this is the best grainy photo I can show.
The kids had a blast, and the grownups got ten whole minutes to ourselves. Whee!
I think it’s becoming a summer tradition!
Last Friday night, for a second week in a row, we hosted another outdoor movie. This time, we got a little more high tech. We moved out of the backyard and onto the driveway. We used magnets to attach a white tablecloth to the garage door, and figured out how to rig a boom box to the system to improve the sound quality. Woo hoo! We are high class now, people! We’re going to end up annoying ALL of the neighbors!
We started the night with an attack of spray Silly String. That got the kids all riled up. Fun!
Then we got out the big popcorn machine and glow sticks. Some of the kids tried to make shadow puppets on the garage door as we pulled benches, chairs and blankets up to the driveway. We let the kids vote on which movie to watch, and they chose The Sandlot. (Note to self: this is NOT a good movie for three-year-old boys who like to repeat off color words. Yes, even the sh*t bomb was dropped. Aaargh!)
The movie started and the kids settled in, and we spilled lots of popcorn all over the driveway. The adults enjoyed a few beverages and time to chat before the night was over and everyone headed home.
My only complaint about outdoor movie night is that it starts so darn late because we have to wait for darkness to fall. But the tradeoff is we are making great memories for our kids and neighbors. I guess we’ll call it even.
By the way, here’s a little link love for some other outdoor movie ideas. Tauni has a few posts on her blog (www.itsatradition.com) that give great tips on hosting a backyard movie. If you can’t find the specific post, here’s one that will get you started. I also LOVE this idea on Homemaking Fun for a homemade drive-in movie theater, complete with cardboard cars.
