Keeping Busy

 I've had the interesting discussion with many teacher friends about keeping our kids busy during our summer vacation.  None of us grew up in a generation that entertained kids as much as kids seem to require today.  My mom was a teacher and was home during the summer, but I remember many days of being told to "find something to do".  The little entertainment I did have usually involved a camp or going to the community pool, not my mom driving me and my sister around town. 
So I've left a lot of room in our schedules this summer for completely unscripted "hang out" time.  The kids now spend most days of the week finding something to do with their toys or exploring the backyard.  I've gotten out my fair share of Play Doh, watercolors, art supplies, and yarn (for Jason's "projects").  I've kept the big expensive activities to a minimum, like our trip to the Children's Museum.  We went last week with our friends Emma & Sam and I wasn't too sure that the kids would have enough to do to justify the cost.  Behold, the kids ran around for 3 hours while Marianne and I parked it on a bench and gossiped away.  We followed that with lunch at McDonalds and lots of PlayPlace time and our day was complete!

playing "dentist"

"construction workers"

In honor of Jason's lost tooth, he stole the teeth models from the dentist area!

Jason Lost a Tooth!

 Who knew that 4 year olds lose teeth?!  Emily lost her first tooth at 4 because she was headbutted by a classmate.  Her two front bottom teeth fell out over the next 2 days, followed by 6 more teeth in the last 2 years.  When Jason visited the dentist last month, she mentioned that his two lower front teeth were loose.  Jason said that he could move them back and forth with his tongue but I didn't think they would go anywhere until he was in kindergarten.  Little did we know that a visit to Fire House would bring a lost tooth!
We were running errands in town on Thursday and we stopped for some lunch.  The picture above was taken to show Timmy that Jason had just gotten a new haircut.  He still has his tooth here :)  After a couple of bites of turkey sub, Jason nonchalantly hands me his tooth and says "This just fell out".  The tooth fairy was very generous for her first visit and gave Jason a whole dollar!

Day & Night Fireworks Fun

 Tim may have (definitely) went overboard on the fireworks purchasing this year.  He wanted to rekindle all the memories of his childhood when he (unsupervised) playing with black snakes, cats, poppers, etc.  He still has all 10 fingers, so we went ahead and bought a bunch of fun stuff for the kids this year!  During the day, we lit the smoke bombs (lots of different colors), snakes, poppers, and magic turtles.  At night, we played with sparklers, mini monsters (fountains of light showers), and some firecrackers called Mean Mr. Hedgehog that spit out lots of colors and then spun around to try and burn your ankles.  
The kids loved it!  We bought enough stuff to last for about 3 days of spontaneous shows :) 

Lighting the smoke bombs

Can you tell that we're dealing with 150% humidity right now?!  All nighttime pictures include this beautiful foggy lens detail!

You can still see the remainder of the fountain fireworks behind Jason, smoldering in the yard.

Fishin' Fun!

 We're very blessed to have Tim's parents only 20 minutes away from us, and doubly blessed that they live on the water!  They live on a creek that has direct access to the Potomac River, and Tim grew up on that river--swimming, crabbing, going on the jet ski, partying on the nearby beach, you name it!  He's been itching to get the kids out for some fishing this summer, and they are finally old enough to handle top boat speeds, wakes from other boats rocking our boat, and casting/reeling in a fishing pole. 
 We went out yesterday around 6 PM and hoped to hit the feeding time so that each kid would get a least one hit.  We lucked out with both kids catching fish after fish (so many that Tim and I never got a chance to rig our poles, we just helped the kids the whole time!).  They caught mostly perch and croaker with a hard head and rock fish thrown in there as well.  On our way back to the grandparent's dock we saw skates skimming across the top of the calm water, flicking their fins up at us.  All in all, the kids caught about 2 dozen fish (!) and had a great time!