S'Mores Party!

Last night we were able to cross another fun thing off of our summer list; s'mores! We had originally planned on having these in July, but it was after I got sick with bronchitis & Jeff was still not feeling too well from his lingering pneumonia, so we had to call it off. That's OK though because it was 110* that day & it would have been miserable!! We rescheduled and the weather was beautiful! We had it out at my sister & brother-in-law's house (Amy & Sam), so we were out in the country where there was plenty of room for the kids to run! My brother & sister-in-law (Tom & Carla) brought a case of silly string for the kids to play with, so we set out the cans & let the kids go at it! They had a ton of fun!!

After the silly string, we set the s'more stuff out:

If you have never had a s'more with a Reese's peanut butter cup, you don't know what you're missing! They are SO yummy! =)

Sam got the fire going & the kids got the marshmallows roasting!

Don't worry, we realize how dry it has been. Sam & Amy made sure that the ground had been nice and saturated with water and they kept a hose that was on near the fire the whole time.

This was SO much fun! After everyone had their fill of s'mores, Amy brought out the homemade vanilla & strawberry ice cream she had made. The kids ran around with glow in the dark bracelets (thanks Grammy!), and they even played "Ghosts in the Graveyard", a game we adults all played as kids. =)
I can't wait to get together again for another party like this!!

Scavenger Hunt & Mega Bubbles!

Yesterday, we were able to check off two more things from our Summer Fun List! We had a scavenger hunt, and then did mega bubbles. This year for our scavenger hunt, I divided the kids up into 3 groups instead of 2. The youngest kids (5 & 4 year olds) had pictures and a relatively short list. The second group (7 year olds) had words, but a shorter list than the oldest group (9 - 13 year olds) who had a longer and more complicated list. Each person got a bag with their name on it to collect things in and the oldest kids got a pen, because they had to write some things in, like "how many windows are on the garage". All of the groups had to find certain people & either have them write their name on their paper or they had to ask them a question, like, "what is your favorite food". They also had to find certain items to put in their bag. For example: find something soft, or find a rock shaped like a square. Once they had their bag & their list, they were off!

There were 3 winners, one from each group. They were Johnny, Riley, and Cooper. Good job guys!

After Grammy made a yummy lunch of home-made mini pizzas for the kids, we headed outside to do mega bubbles! I found the recipe for these on the Internet. I mixed 6 cups distilled water, with 2 cups Joy dishwashing soap, & 3/4 of a cup of light corn syrup. I mixed it up in the morning, & let it sit for a few hours. Then I used wooden dowels with yarn attached to them to make a "D" for the wands.

We started out with the bubble solution in bowls, but they dowel rods would not fit in them all of the way, so we got pans instead, which worked much better! The kids were very frustrated at first because the bubbles just weren't working. After awhile though, they finally started getting big bubbles! I think the sticks & yarn needed to be soaked in the solution before they would really work.

Carson was really good at getting giant bubbles!!

After the novelty of the bubbles wore off, they ran through the sprinkler to cool off & to get all of that soap off of them! =) 

Sponge Bombs!

We had a sponge bomb fight yesterday at my sister Mary's house. I saw the idea for these on Pinterest & thought they would be fun to add to our Summer Fun List. I asked everyone to help buy sponges because it takes 2 sponges to make one sponge bomb, and there were 11 kids doing it. This is how I made them:
You need sponges (lots of colors make them more fun, I think), zip ties, wire cutters, and scissors.

Cut up the sponges into four long strips:

Take 8 of the strips and stack them in two's so you have a nice pile. (This picture does not actually show a pile, I forgot to take that picture.) ;0)

Place a zip tie around the middle of the stack and pull it as tight as you can.

Use wire cutters (or nail clippers) to cut off the extra zip tie. And that's it!

We had around 20 sponges to play with!

I filled bowls full of water with the sponges in them & let the kids go get them & either throw the sponges at each other or squish the water out of them onto each other.

I think the kids all had fun and we can even save them for next year!!

Summer Fun!

Glow in the dark bubbles was on our Summer Fun List, so we invited Ares over to see if he wanted to do them with us. We put bubbles into jars, cut open glow sticks, and then added them to the bubbles:

We were VERY disappointed by these. :0(

The glow stick solution made the bubble solution glow for less than a minute.

The bubbles themselves didn't glow at all. :0(

Oh well. Lesson learned. The kids had fun playing with Ares though. :0)

Today, we had our 2nd annual water balloon fight!! This year, everyone filled balloons up and we ended up with around 850 balloons!!!!

This isn't even all of them, there was one more cooler full. We had several towels full of balloons around the park for the kids to run to. They were super excited about all of those balloons.

When it was finally time to have the fight, we lined the kids up on the sidewalk.

On your mark, Get set....

GO!!!

Last year the fight lasted less than 5 minutes. This year, it was closer to 15!
Thank you to everyone who filled balloons up!! I know the kids had a lot of fun!