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!!

Our 4th of July

We had a pretty quiet 4th of July this year. Poor Jeff is going on his 3rd week of pneumonia and the doctor told him he had to stay inside and rest. So, we decided to stay at home this year, that way Jeff wasn't completely left out.
We took our annual 4th of July shirt picture. :0)

Then we broke out the fireworks!

We did about half of their "day works" and then hit Lily's new slip n slide to cool off!

Popsicles after the slip n slide? Yes, please!

It was rather toasty, so we stayed indoors for awhile and played. Ares (and the rest of his family) came over to see us! Apparently that meant Lily & Ares needed to play dress-up. ;0) 

After awhile, the kids couldn't stand seeing all of those unused fireworks, so we headed back out to shoot the rest of the day ones off.

To cool off this time, the kids jumped in the pool!

Then it was time for some yummy watermelon....

and homemade peach ice cream! (Thanks Grammy!!)

Then it was time for....you guessed it! More fireworks!

Zach & Riley were pretending to be wizards with wands....

The kids had some cool fountains that they shot off:

Jeff was very good and stayed inside during all of this fun stuff. He did come sit in front of the front glass door and watched though.

The one time he came outside, was to light the one big nightwork he had bought.

It was a really good firework too! Then he went back inside while the kids & I cleaned up and then sat on the driveway watching all of the neighbors' fireworks.
Even though our 4th was pretty laid back, it was nice. And I think the kids had a lot of fun. :0)

Emma's Baptism

On Sunday, Jeff & I became the Godparents of my sister & brother-in-law's (Amy & Sam) baby, Emma!

 

We were very honored to be asked!

Sam's brother (and his wife who could not come) were also Godparents.

Sam's brother, Chad, is a priest. He was able to come to do the Baptism!

The proud parents:

Emma holding her new rosary. :0)

Congratulations Miss Emma!
Thank you Amy & Sam for asking us to be Emma's Godparents!

Science Day!

Last Thursday, my sister Amy invited us over for a science day at her house! The first thing she had set up for us to make was oobleck!

Each kid got water and they could add what color they wanted, plus cornstarch. (You use 1 part water & 1 1/2 to 2 parts cornstarch)

They slowly added their water to their cornstarch.

After awhile, they couldn't use their spoon anymore, so they had to use their hands!! 

All of the kids liked this part, except Lily. She put one finger in and decided it was too messy for her. LOL!

The kids had fun experimenting with it. If you let your hand gently slide into it, it is a liquid. If you try to push your finger into it really hard, it is a solid!

After we got all of the oobleck cleaned up, we made volcanoes!

Each child got a paper plate, a little plastic cup, and foil.

They taped the cup to the paper plate, then wrapped the foil around it and cut a whole where the cup was. Then they added baking soda & water to the cup and put food coloring in it:

Then it was time for the vinegar! The vinegar reacts with the baking soda and makes it look like a volcano erupting!

After lunch, we headed to the basement to make slime!

I have no idea how this was made. It had glue, water, and borax in it, but I'm not sure how it all was put together. The kids loved it though! =) 

The grand finale of the day was mentos in pop bottles!

Amy had a bottle of pop and a package of mentos for each kid. She also had a cool gadget to put the mentos in with a string attached to it so that the kids could pull the string away from the pop so they weren't right under it when it went off. 

I loved Riley's face when his pop went up in the air!

Apparently Lily couldn't wait, because she pulled the string before she & Amy coudl get out of the way. Poor Amy!

Zach just stuck his face in his to drink the minty pop!



The kids had so much fun & learned some cool stuff on science day. Thanks Amy for inviting the kids over & and doing these fun experiments with them!