My Summer Reading List: Update

At the beginning of summer I posted that I had a reading list set for myself.  It consisted of a whopping two books!  I had such high hopes of getting at least ONE read!  Unfortunately that did not happen!  I not only didn't get ONE read, I didn't get TWO read!!

I knew making that list that it would be a challenge to get them read, but I thought that by blogging about it I would be held accountable.  Yeah, didn't happen!

The two books that I had wanted to get read this summer were:  Educating the Whole Hearted Child by Clay and Sally Clarkson, and Cleaning House by Kay Wills Wyma.  I shared earlier why I didn't finish reading Cleaning House, you can be reminded of that here.

My reason for not finishing Educating the Whole Hearted Child, well, I really have no good reason!  I was super busy organizing and rearranging my house that the time I thought I would have in the afternoons to read just didn't happen.  I did however get 3 and a half chapters read.  And never fear, I will continue on and I will finish it sometime.  My new goal is by Christmas, Easter, the beginning of next summer!  That gives me a whole 9 months, I should be able to accomplish that, right??!!

Summer Bucket List: Update

All summer long we have been working on a summer bucket list that we created at the beginning of summer.  The list included quite a few items, some of them were pretty lofty on my part, but I wanted my kids to have a  good summer filled with things we hadn't done before.  Since last summer was kind of a bust for our kids, I felt a bit guilty and wanted to make it up to them.

As a reminder here is a link to the post I wrote on what was on our bucket list.  Unfortunately we only accomplished about 8 of the items.  The weather was a huge factor for us, it rained most of June and half of July.  When I say rained, I mean RAINED!!!  There was about 5-6 out of 7 days a week that it rained.  Then when it stopped raining, the yard was so muddy and soggy we couldn't even play in it.  So that crossed off about 30% of the items on our list, including hiking and an obstacle course!

Another factor that contributed to us not getting things checked off, is that it just didn't get that hot.  Here in the midwest you can almost always count on at least getting to 100*+ in July.  This year, we barely made it to 90*!  I love the hot weather!  I do not love the cool weather!  I was really looking forward to doing some great water games and such with the kids.  We did have quite a few super soaker fights and water balloon fights, and some slip n' slide fun as well, just not as much as I would have liked.

This is the the greatest invention ever!!!  Although it's a cheap version
that I found at Wal-Mart, it worked ok.  

This is our attempt at a water slide.  The hose is draped through
the wooden beam and pouring onto the slide.  

I love this one because I caught him mid fall!  

Although our summer is officially over with us beginning school, we will still try to do a few more items on this list before the true end of summer comes in September.  I am hoping to get at least 2 more things accomplished.  Elijah has been asking to make ice cream in a bag, so we will try that one.  I would also like to still get in that hike/nature scavenger hunt.

We actually were able to accomplish some things that were not on our list!  I took the boys mini golfing on the last Friday before we began school.  They had so much fun!  Zach was hilarious because he would hit the ball and then pick it up and take it to the hole, set it down a few inches from the hole and then putt it in! This mini golf course had water traps and a fun cave!  They boys had so much fun!  It's these things that I look forward to getting to do more often now that we are out of the toddler/baby stage.

We also made a fun marble track using pool noodles cut in half.  We taped the ends together and the kids had so much fun trying to make the marbles go farther and farther each time.  You can see here that they are standing on the piano bench and he would put the noodle all the way at the ceiling and then drop it!

My husband took my older boys to a Minor League baseball game, they had a great time!  They each got a new baseball too!

I am hoping that between all of the bucket list items and extras, along with our family vacation to Mt. Rushmore that the boys had a great summer.  

Tips for a Great Summer Road Trip with Kids

The last time we went on a road trip was last summer, it went well, but it was also only about a 5 hour trip.  Our last LONG road trip was about 3 and a half years ago, we drove 17 hours to visit my brother and his family over Thanksgiving.  The trip technically was only about 14 hours but you know with kids you have to add another couple hours for stops.  Our kids at that time were 8, 4, and 3 months old.  We drove through the night, and it was a great way to travel.  The one good factor we had going for us is that we had family waiting for us when we arrived to watch the kids for a few hours so my husband and I could get a bit of sleep.

Photo Credit

This summer we are once again going on a pretty long road trip.  This time to Mt. Rushmore!  My kids are beyond excited for this trip!  It's about a 13 hour drive for us, and our kids are now ages 10 (almost 11), 7.5, and 3 (almost 4).

As I was thinking and planning for our trip, I of course did a few Pinterest searches.  You know the web is filled with amazing ideas!  I found a TON of awesome ideas!  I am now excited to share with you the things I found and what I will be using to help keep the hooligans, boys, in line in the car.

First up, are activity packets.  I printed off a ton of games, coloring pages, and a U.S. National Parks and Historic Places packet for Elijah to work on.  I printed off travel bingo, tic tac toe, dots, the license plate game, billboard alphabet game, and some Star Wars coloring pages. They also each have a United States map that they can use to track our route to Mt. Rushmore.  I bought some clip boards that you can store stuff in, and went ahead and had the pages all bound together, that way we don't have papers flying all over the car.  To get them bound at Office Max was about $3 a book, not sure if was worth it, but I think for my sanity over pages flying every where it just might be.

Go to Edventures for Kids to find the printables that I used.

Next, I saw this great idea to have little packages for the kids to open at certain intervals during the trip.  I went to the dollar store and hit up the Target Dollar Spot for cheap items to fill these bags.  I found coloring books, little trinket toys, glow sticks, stickers, and candy.  These will make a great surprise for them along the way. I just bought the plain old brown lunch sacks to put them in because I couldn't find fun colorful bags anywhere!  I'm not sure if I will let them open one an hour, or one at every stop we make.  I am leaning towards every stop we make, like a gas station or rest area.  Each child will have 6 bags to open during our trip there.  Since we will be traveling at night after dark, I got some glow sticks for them, those will be the last bags they open.  One great tip I learned was to not forget the trip home!  So some of these items will be used for our return trip.  I will bring some paper bags with us and fill a few of them before we leave to come home.  They will probably only get about 2-3 bags each on the way home though.

Then, we bought a few travel games.  Some we found at garage sales (travel Battleship and the wooden peg games), another I just bought from Toys R Us (travel Connect 4) and my mom bought us the game travel Spot It.  Even though I printed off some travel Bingo games, I also had these fun Auto Bingo games that I found at Cracker Barrel, so we will be bringing these along as well.

Next up is our food list!  When we travel, we typically like to eat out, but our budget for this trip is very small.  So this time we will be taking food for our lunches, our hotel will provide breakfast, and then we will just eat dinner out.  So in the car I plan to have bread to make sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly,  we will also buy a few lunchables to have just to break up the sandwich monotony, a case of bottled water, some juice boxes, and other snack food.  We will have grapes and apples along with cheese sticks as well.  I like to also bring some goldfish crackers, yogurt tubes, and raisins those things are easy for my kids to grab and eat in the car.

If you are taking a road trip this summer I highly suggest you take a look at Kids Activities Blog she has an amazing list of tips for travel with kids.

I hope this gave you some great ideas for your next road trip!  I will give my review on how this all worked out for us when we return!

Summer Bucket List Item 8

We once again got to do another item off of our summer bucket list!  Today we made a water balloon piñata.  I wasn't quite sure how I was going to pull it off, as the blog I found the idea on suggested using an item that I didn't have.  I decided to just use some twine and tie it between two trees, then hang the water balloons up using a clothes pin.  That worked really well!

Instead of just having my kids hit at the balloons with a stick I got little brave and decided to attach a screw to the end of a stick and let them poke at the balloons that way!  With very careful supervision that went over really well.

In hindsite I think I should have made more of a game out of it rather than just letting them go at it!  It took me about 30 minutes to fill up the balloons, another 10 minutes to set up the twine and less than 10 minutes for them to be done.  I was a little disappointed that it didn't last longer, but they had a great time doing it.

It really was a fun activity if I would have made a game of it, such as blind folding them, timing them, or even putting paint or something in the balloons.  I think I also only had about 30 balloons filled.

I am happy though that we were able to check another item off of our list.  After the week we had weather wise it was nice to get outside and play in the water.  After the water balloon piñata we got out our slip n slides again and they had a good time using those, while I cleaned out our van for our upcoming vacation.  Speaking of vacation, I have a great post coming up about what I do to plan for a long road trip with 3 kids in tow!   I hope you have a great weekend and can get out there and check off some of your summer bucket items!

Summer Bucket List Item 7

Today we made bird feeders!  It was super fun and easy!  We are still having a lot of rain here in the midwest and this mamma is about to go crazy!  

I needed something fun and easy to do inside.  I found this recipe for the bird feeders at Pink Pistachio.  The recipe calls for gelatin which the author assures is safe for birds.  I was a little worried but I'll trust her, she says she spoke with a "bird lady".  It's a super easy and quick recipe to follow, and Elijah was even able to help mix it all up.

Luckily, I already had the 2 packets of gelatin and the 2 cups of bird seed needed.  Basically you dilute the gelatin in water over medium heat stirring until it simmers, then stir in the bird seed.  Let that cool a few minutes.  While the bird seed is cooling, line cookie sheets with wax paper and spray your cookie cutters with cooking spray.

Once the seed mixture is cool to touch, it only took about 3 minutes, you can spoon it into the cookie cutters. Put a straw through the bird seed mixture to make a hole for the twine. Place in the refrigerator to let cool completely for about one hour.

The author says that it makes two feeders but we were able to get five.

I checked ours after an hour and it was still a bit mushy, so I left them in the refrigerator for the rest of the afternoon.  Once they are ready tie some twine through the hole made by the straw and then hang outside for the birdies to enjoy!

Now to just find the right spot to hang these outside and for it to stop raining long enough for the birds to enjoy them!

Summer Bucket List Item Number 6

In the midwest we had almost the wettest June on record!  We would have about 3-4 days a week that were all rain!  Our yard was and still is a bit of a mud pit!  Thankfully its looking like July might be a bit better.  Our temperatures today are up to 90*!  Whoo hoo!!!  I love the hot weather.

Today we did a few more items on our bucket list.  We dug for dinosaur fossils and played with our slip and slide.  They boys were so excited about both of these activities.


The dinosaur fossils were a huge hit!  They loved using the hammers to chisel away each individual little dino.  This activity was super easy to put together, but it did take some prep work.  Last week I put some little dinosaurs and other little creatures that we had laying around in some tubs with water and stuck them in our freezer.  Then this morning I took them out and dumped them into bigger containers to use for chiseling them away.

The boys also got lucky that my husband and I cleaned out the garage this weekend and found our slip and slide.

Sidewalk Chalk Paint: Summer Bucket List Item Number 5

After a long break, I think I can breath again!  Life got super busy, and when life gets super busy, the house gets super messy!  Then I spend a good week trying to get it back in order.

Today we were finally able to get to another item on our summer bucket list!  Yay!  We did the sidewalk chalk paint.  The kids had a great time!  It was also super easy to put together!  You can find the recipe that I used here. 

We used sponge paint brushes, but towards the end we decided to try some different things.  We tried sticks, leaves both dead and alive ones, and 'helicopters'.   One thing I liked about this chalk paint is that the colors were really bright!  We also used quite a few more drops of food coloring than suggested, because I let the kids do that part!

We aslo had fun mixing colors.  We tried blue paint on top of green paint, yellow paint on top of orange.  They were all really intent on making brown, so they were seeing what colors it took to do that.

Progress on the Summer Bucket List

I am so excited about how our summer bucket list is coming along.  Honestly I think that having mentioned it on my blog is helping me stick to it!  My kids are loving the activities and I am feeling a bit more creative since I already have things written down and don't have to come up with stuff on the spot to entertain them.

We once again got to check an item off, this time it was a water balloon fight!  I must admit that filling those water balloons was enough to make me want to pull my hair out!  I ended up only getting about 28 filled before I called it quits.  Twenty eight balloons for three kids is not a lot!  They unfortunately ran out pretty quickly, but they did have a great time!  After the balloons were gone they got out the water guns so all was well!  We were also able to check off making sno cones!  They were delicious, but I forgot to take pictures of us enjoying them!  Maybe next time I make them I will get a picture!

If I had thought ahead and wanted to spend a little extra money I would have gotten this awesome thing!  It fills like 100 balloons at one time and they are all tied and ready to go within 30 seconds to a minute!  How cool is that!



Since that is a kind of pricey option and you can only buy refills and not use your own water balloons, I opted to get this cool item from Target!  Basically it does the same thing but you supply your own balloons and it was a much cheaper solution.  I haven't used it yet, but hoping it will work well enough to justify the money spent.

One thing I have been trying this summer is to become a 'yes' mom.  I often would find myself saying no a lot, when the kids would want to do something that messy or takes prep time I often tell them no.  I wanted to do better for them.  I am now being more conscience and saying yes as much as possible. In doing that I think my kids are having a lot more fun and I am not as grumpy because they are entertained and being creative!