Tuesday, July 24, 2012

We've Been Busy...Having Fun!

     More progress has been made on our Summer Fun List! First off, I found a basic recipe in a magazine for funnel cakes, but this recipe is almost identical to the one I used. I can't believe how incredibly easy they are to make, and SO DELICIOUS!!  My kids actually said they were better than the ones at the fair :)

     Since we didn't get enough of a sugar high from the funnel cakes, we also made S'More Cones last week. (Not the same day - that would be insane!)  We used waffle cones, stuffed them with mini marshmallows, chocolate chunks, sprinkles, white chocolate chips, and mini peanut butter cups. You can really put anything in there you want, that's the beauty of these!  Then we wrapped the whole thing in foil and put them in a 350 degree oven for 5-10 minutes.  We would have done these on the grill or over the fire pit, but it was storming outside the day we made them.  They still turned out AMAZING and were so much less messy than s'mores.  We will definitely be making these again soon.

     After all that sugar, we needed an activity to get us out and moving.  Unfortunately, it was raining that day, so we chose bowling off our list.  We signed our kids up for the Kid's Bowl Free program at our local bowling alley, and the professor and I purchased the parent pass when it was offered at a 20% discount. This was a really fun activity for all of us, but by the end of the second game Peanut was getting a little tired of bowling.  The rest of us took turns finishing out her game and of course, she beat us all.

     Another activity we completed on our list was feeding some ducks. When we first got out at the lake all that was around were these nasty, mean geese.  Then, from way across the lake we saw all these ducks jump into the water and start making their way across to us.  Once the ducks got over to us, the kids had fun feeding them bread while I tried to distract the geese.  The geese were so mean and aggressive, hissing at us and getting a little too close for comfort when they wanted more bread.  When we were all out of bread, I told the kids to make a run for it to the van.  I was seriously afraid of being attacked by these hissing geese.  We made it safely to the van with no injuries, but needless to say, feeding ducks is no longer an activity I think of as fun (at least not when there are geese around).

     We were also able to check off Make Slime, but I forgot to get a picture of it.  We used this recipe for our slime and it turned out great.  
     We also checked off Watch Movies All Day. This was meant to be done on a rainy day, but we had a string of days in the high 90's, so after a few days of the kids playing outside in the heat, I thought they needed a break and so I allowed them to watch movies instead.  As I sit here looking at my board with 18 more things on it I'm beginning to think I may have been a little ambitious when I made our list. We may not get them all done, but we're sure having fun trying :)

Monday, July 2, 2012

New Parks and Trying to Stay Cool


     A friend was just telling me about a great new park that was put in recently in our area.  We haven't had a chance to go yet, so when I saw "Discover a new park" on our Summer Fun List this morning, I decided to load the kids up and head to the new park before the day got too hot.  I love to see great new playgrounds go in that actually look like traditional playgrounds. For some odd reason, so many of the parks around here look more like art installations than playgrounds, and kids have no idea how to play on the weird equipment.  We all had a great time, and we get to check another fun thing off our list!



     We haven't been suffering the brutal heat lately that some of the country is feeling, but it is summer, and the temps have been climbing into the 90's around here - which is hot for us, especially for June.  In an attempt to stay cool, we chose some things off the Summer Fun List to help with that.  A few weeks ago we made popsicles, and also had a Sponge Bomb Water Fight.  Two more things to check off the list - only 24 more to go :)