Never Trust Them

For today's installment in our Summer Fun series, we made cloud dough.  Eight cups of flour and 1 cup of oil.  I keep my flour in that bucket.  The instructions said you could use any kind of oil and I probably would have used canola if I didn't have this thing of baby oil under my cabinet. I've had this since Lillian was a baby and haven't used it until today because, frankly, I have no idea what baby oil is supposed to be for.  Are you supposed to rub it into their skin? Because I feel like that would just make them oily.  Baby oil, Q-tips, and cotton balls, when it comes to baby hygiene, are all mysteries to me.

The consistency of the dough is like fluffy wet sand, except not wet.  The kids had fun playing bakery and making cakes, and then pretending like they had kids of their own who needed cakes.  It got pretty involved: naming their kids, what age they are, what kind of cakes they like, etc.

Ethan liked it, but he wasn't that good at pushing the dough into the cups to make shapes.

We played for 20-ish minutes and then I decided I could slip away and fold a load of laundry.  The kids were playing really appropriately and not throwing it or eating it.  I told them to try to keep it on their pans.

I'm going to go ahead and blame the pregnancy for the not nice words that came out of my mouth when I came downstairs like 15 minutes later.  These shots don't really capture the carnage... but they managed to get it everywhere.  Also, it appeared that Ethan took a break from playing at the table and wiped his floury hands over every surface of the house.  I was mostly mad at myself.  "ROOKIE MISTAKE," I shouted at myself over and over again.

Why did I trust them? Never trust them.

Bunk Beds

The girls have shared a room since Ethan was born, but these beds were just two twins.

As part of our Summer To-Do List, Lillian wanted to make them into bunk beds.

Pro tip: do not try to assemble bunk beds by yourself while 7 months pregnant.

We also painted our loft which has been half-painted for... a while.  The tape and sheeting were left up for a day or two while we were putting up a few coats and I found this little guy is a bark scorpion which the bug guy said that he sprayed for.  Blech, I hate scorpions.

Waterwall

I purchased an ebook with simple summer activities from the girl who does NoTimeForFlashcards plus some other cutsie-pie crafty moms.  I picked out all the activities that I wanted to do and went to ACE Hardware to purchase supplies for all of them, so I would be all ready.

We tried out our first one today: making a waterwall.  The original idea was to nail the bottles to your fence, I used zip ties.

Pros: 1. Cheap- I paid about $4 for a pack of 100 zip ties.

2. Age appropriate for all 3 kids.

3. Doesn't "waste" water as you can re-use it over and over again.

Cons: 1. Children cannot help construct what with the using a utility knife to cut the plastic, so they got bored and started fighting.

2. Only one child can use at a time...

 

 So the other kids might find it really boring and look like this:

3. The kids only played with it for about 20 minutes, then they got too hot and went inside.

Summertime and a new camera

Because Arizona is weird, school got out last week.  I had Lillian write up a Summer Fun List of all the things she wanted to do this summer.  Surprisingly, most to all of her suggestions were pretty do-able... like, hide-and-seek, pillo figt (sic), and have a water fight in the backyard.  Also on the list was "Make ice cream which Tyler took care of while I was at work yesterday.

We recently purchased a new camera and it's pretty fancy.  I took a photography class in high school (one semester) but that was dealing with an antiquated film camera and most of the class involved dark room techniques.  My sister Anne recently got a new camera and has been sending us helpful articles on how to not stink at taking pictures.  One of the tips that Tyler read was that when photographing children, you need to get down on their level.

So, he took the above shot,

and then he remembered he was supposed to get down on the ground... so the kids did too.

Kartchner Caverns

My in-laws were here for a week and so we did a whole hecka-lotta things, most of which I failed to get pictures of because I was chasing after one kid or another. One thing that we did and that I did take at least some pictures of is head down to Kartchner Caverns.

The caves are "alive" so you are not allowed to touch anything.  Or take pictures.  Or touch the curbs on the side of the walkway, or let your clothes touch the curbs.  Or talk or complain that you hate the caves while the fussy tour guide is talking (Ethan, I'm looking at you).

Photo appropriated from Arizona State Parks

This is what the formations look like.  It's very pretty, and also impressive how much work two U of A grad students did to keep this thing a secret while trying to get it turned into a state park before it fell victim to vandals and thieves.  The tour was fun for the kids, but a little over their heads what with the guide going on and on about how carbon dioxide dissolved the limestone to form the cave, and the barometric pressure of the cave, and the minerals contained in the various colors of the rock, etc.  I would give a green light to those 5 and over.  What I really wanted to do (Ethan as well) was to climb off the path and wander around, but I think what with the no touching policy, I would have been arrested.

Budding cavers inside the visitor's center

Ethan mostly just wanted to play with the lockers and cried when I dragged him away

After this, I took the two littler kids home for naps while Mark and Darlene took Lillian down to Tombstone.  I was skeptical that they would last very long as it was already pushing 100 at 11:30, but they didn't come back until 6 or so.  I presume they saw gunfights, wandered around Boot Hill, and saw the courthouse.  I know there was sarsaparilla involved (which who knew was spelled like that?) but I didn't see any pictures, so these reports cannot be independently verified.

Thanks for coming Darlene and Mark, and thanks for doing all the dishes while you were here.  Seriously, that was amazing.

Water fun when it's only 90

My sister-in-law and her family came to visit us when Nora was a baby.  It was April and it was fairly warm, like in the upper 80s and 90s.  We took them to the pool.  Now, I never go to the pool in the "off season" mostly because during the summer months, we spend so much time, so, so much time at the pool, I get really sick of it and have to take a 7-month break.  However, what we discovered on that sunny day in April was that for Southern Arizona, it was too cold to swim.

It wasn't that we were being wimps either.  Well, maybe we were.  But I really think the low humidity makes the water evaporate off your skin faster, sucking heat off your body and if it's not 105 degrees, it gets really cold.

 All of that story has nothing to do with these pictures, taken by Tyler while I was working a few days back.

Just some little blondies playing in the backyard, trying to stay cool.  Story of my life.