We've got tons of board games. Usually during the summer months they sit forgotten on the shelf, as we spend most of our time outdoors. We have been having unseasonably cool weather so to keep ourselves warm we stayed indoor and marked off play board games. One of their favorite games (and my least favorite games) is Sorry, we almost never make it all the way through the game without hurt feelings and some tears. When they chose it as our game for the evening, I suggested we start with a happy friendly game of Candyland before seeking revenge on each other in Sorry. I was a proud mama when we actually made it to the end of both games without any hurt feeling. I however had to keep sacrificing my poor little pieces to keep the peace. I manage to only have 3 pieces still at start when the game concluded :)
We have a habit of saving toilet paper tubes. You never know when they'll come in handy for a craft. We had about a dozen on hand and used them to create bird feeders. The tubes were much easier to spread peanut butter on versus using pinecones. Except the only peanut butter we had was chunky (I don't recommend it). I had left over yarn from my crochet projects which served as hangers for our feeders. The only thing we had to buy was bird food to roll the peanut butter coated (really really coated) tubes in. We had to wait a couple days to hang them due to more rainy weather.
Even though we've been to a new zoo this summer, it's tradition to visit the Detroit Zoo. We chose both a great day and not so good day to go. That evening The Verve Pipe was playing (a band I'd loved back in the 90's, but now does children's songs). It also rained for most of the time we were there. We thought most of the rain had passed before we headed down to the zoo, but played it safe by my carrying a little umbrella with us. (I know if we would have carted our big "keep the whole family dry" umbrella with us , it wouldn't have rained a drop.) Once we reached the far corner of the zoo the constant drizzle started. We took turns with the little umbrella so none of us had to get too wet and made our way towards where the concert was being held, only seeing the animals that were on our way there. We sat on our rapidly getting wet blanket huddled under our little umbrella and listened to half the music performance. During one of their breaks Jake, Joey, and I went to get pictures taken with the band members. Jordan stayed put on his tiny dry square of the blanket with the little umbrella. The band's drummer even let the boys go up on the stage so Joey could get his picture taken at the drums. A short time later, we decided we had had enough of the rain and ventured back into the heavier downpour to the butterfly house to warm up (with the rain came even cooler temperatures) before taking our soggy selves home.
It had been a very trying day. The recent weather had meant too much together time cooped up in house when they've been used to running outside. The boys were driving me nuts with the bickering and to me it seemed like they were searching for ways to aggravate each other. We were in need of an attitude change and none of my usual tactics were working. So with a quick run to the store for ice cream and root beer , in hopes that making Root beer Floats would help change their mind sets. When we returned I couldn't find our float cups off hand, not wanting to chance arguments starting over who was going to get which color straw; I grabbed our sundae cups. We made 2 mini floats instead of one larger one. YAY, for mom! Thankfully it had worked, and they were in better moods. We made it more peacefully through the rest of the day.
After too many rainy days, we got a small break of sunshine and found a bucket list activity we could do outdoors. Joey loves paper airplanes; every note that was sent home from school was fashioned into a plane of some sort for me to have to unfold after he threw them towards me. With some of bucket list activities not being something Joey was into, this one was geared towards him. We made basic airplanes, nothing fancy like the ones we tried from the origami books a couple months ago. We decorated them to make them more personal, went out to a nearby field, and flew them a whole 2 yards before they crashed. This was another great in theory activity, we had envisioned flying them at least 5 yards. We soon switched out our paper planes for foam planes. These ones we much more fun; not only did they fly more than 5 yard but also glided, looped, flew upside down and dive-bombed. Where as the paper airplanes had kept them entertained for 5 minutes, the foam planes kept the laughing and running around for 45 minutes (that's when one finally landed in a tree).
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