So how’s your summer going? Why is mine so slow? Maybe I’m not busy enough. Or maybe it’s because my kids are home all the time! So how can I keep them busy without indulging them in expensive getaways and camps? This is what we’ve done so far…

*I put the sprinkler under the trampoline. It sprays up like a water fountain and they jump with their swimsuits on. We are on water restrictions so I had to turn it off after 20 min.

*We had a pudding party. We bought different flavor puddings and made up some games. I let them each invite one friend. I didn’t have my camera for that…Rob took it to Boy Scout Camp for a week.
Games we played:
Worm Walk (it’s like a cake walk, but with gummy worms that I put on a makeshift fishing pole and fed them the worm when their number was called). They played that until the whole bag of gummy worms was gone.
Pin the Pudding in the Bowl (variation of pin the tail on the donkey except I cut out blobs of pudding–banana, lemon, pistachio, chocolate, butterscotch, vanilla–and while blindfolded stick it in the bowl).
Save the bugs. I sunk graham cracker bugs into pudding and they had to pull them out with chopsticks. When they did that I gave them a spoon to eat it.
We also had pudding parfaits and watched The Bee Movie.

*We shopped at Value Village. We found books and treasures…cheap!

*Sleep outs in the backyard on the trampoline. I did that as a kid and have fond memories. My kids woke up at 5:00 am when the birds started chirping, so we won’t be doing that again soon.

As the summer progresses, I’m sure I’ll come up with more stuff for my kids to do…it’s only been three weeks. Three very long weeks.

I painted these for my mom for Mother’s day. She was out of town the week before, so my dad and I hung them up before she got home. They don’t look very big in the picture, but they are 48 inch canvases that fill up her wall nicely. Happy Mother’s Day!