Keeping busy

I don't think it is my job to entertain my kids but I do like to have variety and I think it is fun to have something to look forward to and something to shake things up a bit.  Therefore, I have tried to find things each week to add to our week that would be fun.  One week I was making a grocery list and asked if there were any requests and Isaac asked for candy.  I don't usually just buy candy because they want some but this time I thought, "Why not?"  We got a bunch of candy and then Mike wrapped all the candy up in plastic wrap while he was in a zoom meeting.  Then, we called the kids downstairs and played the candy unwrapping game.  We can't find any of our dice (the container disappeared) so we got a dice app on the phone and one person put on the oven mitts and tried to unwrap candy while the person next to them rolled the dice and tried to get doubles.  Once they rolled doubles, the ball of candy was passed.  The kids had fun.

We have also done a lot of chalk art.  Some was for an art class Eli was taking at school.  His teacher assigned an interactive chalk drawing so Eli chose a dragon.  The girls spend hours chalking up the driveway.  They draw so much that a neighbor left a note with three small containers of chalk on our porch saying to keep up the artwork and that they loved the kids' creations.  It was so nice and made me really happy that our art brightened up someone's day.  

Some other keep busy things:  we have given kids some money to walk down to the Sonic a few blocks away.  They like the treat and I like the quiet house for the few minutes they are gone.  We have also done a Harry Potter movie marathon.  We watch one movie a week and sometimes we split the movie into two days so we have another day to look forward to.  I don't usually provide a treat with this but one time we had butterbeer and another time I made them Orange Julius.  We just finished the sixth movie.  I am not sure what we will do when we finish the next two movies.  The girls are too little for Harry Potter movies, in my opinion, so they go upstairs with Mike and watch a movie or show in our room while he works.  I did let Piper watch the first 3 until the movies got kind of scary and the rating went up to pg-13.  

There have been lots of forts and lots of crafts at our house.  We have gone through a lot of paint and a lot of paper.  The girls come up with all kinds of things.  Today it was a fun watercolor leaf project and yesterday they painted shells and made shell hair clips.  Piper has lost a lot of her barbie clothes so she has decided to come up with her own and spends hours hand stitching shirts and skirts and jackets.  She even sews on little buttons.  One time she used balloons to make a creative shirt for her barbie.  

We haven't gone on a lot of hikes yet but that is partly because we just finished school and I didn't want to mess with Will's online school schedule.  We have some hikes planned for the coming weeks though.  I'd LOVE to go glammping but it looks to be fairly expensive so we probably won't do that.  There is no way I can convince Mike to go real camping but he said he'd do glammping.  We have been sleeping with our big bedroom windows open every night and the breeze and the big tree right outside my window makes me kind of feel like I can pretend to camp.  The truth is, I don't really like the dirty, bad night's sleep part of camping anyway but I really enjoy the rest of it.  Maybe we can find a cabin to escape to...

Finally, since we sold our house, Mike splurged and bought me a super fancy pants camera and some lenses for my birthday and Mother's Day. I love my new toy.  He also wanted to get something fun for the kids and I kind of didn't want to.  He is both more generous and tight with our money.  He wanted something that the kids would love and that we could all have fun on and I just felt like they are already quite spoiled with swings in the basement and their own computers (yes, two of them will be doing online school this year...) and all kinds of fun things.  We really are so blessed and have so much to be thankful for.  Anyway, he bought them a fun virtual reality headset and they love it and use it a lot and can't wait to share it with their friends when we can have friends over again.