Late Summer Fun

Our summer holiday started out fairly structured and is wrapping up with about a month of relatively unplanned time. No camps, no vacations, relatively few appointments, just hanging out. Being a man with much on his mind, I asked FFM what he'd like to do with his time.

"Play."

So we did. Then he gave it a little more thought and he decided he wanted to go to: the aquarium, the water park, the children's museum, the pool, the library, the museum, the botanic gardens, the zoo, the movies, another museum, and,and,and,and. Talk about a summer bucket list!  

Bucket 'o cotton candy at the baseball game with Emma

firefighting at the Children's Museum

Construction zone using recycled materials

Finished product! 

One of our favorite stops was the recycled materials construction zone at the Children's Museum.  Plans were available for several projects and we built a little truck.  The work stations were all well equipped, but when we arrived FFM wandered around passing by the first couple of empty stations.  When I quizzed him about why he told me he had to find a station with safety glasses!

After our day at the Children's Museum we went for a little walk on the nice path by the musuem.  Lo and behold Blue Bell ice cream was running a promotion that day and was giving away free ice cream.  What a deal!

One of everything please!

YUM!

But wait, there's more!  Emma's Mom volunteered to take the kiddos to the zoo for the day.  

Planning their route at the zoo

Riding the carousel.
Emma's very favorite animal is a tiger.

 We've also made it to the library, Museum of Nature and Science, and the aquarium so the bucket list is coming along nicely.  FFM and Travis have a date to go to the waterpark this weekend and as far as F's concerned he'll be done after that.  Phew!

So Many Peaches

We are lucky to live in a neighborhood chock full of fruit trees.  We don't have any in our own yard, but our next door neighbors have cherry, apple, and peach that all share a fence with us.  They've kindly asserted that EVERYTHING we can reach on our side of the fence is ours, and we should eat and pick away.  We just picked the last peach of the season.  I had grand plans of jams, pies, all kinds of yummy sauces.  These are the only peaches I managed to get my hands on.

Early this spring I thinned the peaches on our side of the fence, leaving us with a few nice fat ones.  Some of the branches got so heavy that FFM could easily reach up to pick a peach as he passed by.  Travis, of course, did the same.  F's pal Emma helped out, she bounced over one evening and told me proudly she'd managed to eat FIVE peaches!

Borrowed QOTD

We are spending the weekend with friends who have three kids, the oldest is the same age as FFM. After a nice morning outdoors we're having some down time this afternoon watching the movie ”Pocahontas”. Julia commented,

” Pocahontas isn't nearly as pokey as I thought it would be.”

Tiny DIY

Just in case you think we've been slacking off in the DIY department, have no fear, we are still motoring on.  Our projects have just been itty bitty tiny ones.

Travis, with some help, built a box to insulate our whole house fan so heat from our attic doesn't leak into the upstairs of the house (we think our roof might be under ventilated).  It'll be a really great thing in the winter when we'll stop losing so much heat out of the hole in the ceiling.  It's got nifty hinges on the lid so it opens up when we turn the fan on so we can still benefit from running the fan in the summer.

Sharpie for Daddy, Crayola for F

Meanwhile I've been slowly painting all the new trim around our windows.  There were also various wall patches and touch up that need to be done in almost every room of the house, leftovers from past projects, so I've been dabbing on every color of paint we own and washing lots of brushes.  

Drywall repair

After texture and paint touchup

 In a couple places I decided to change our brown stained trim to white.  Our house is a mish mash of stained trim and painted trim.  I'm working on making it a bit more cohesive.  Most of the main floor is white, the few remaining holdouts are destined to become white in the upcoming weeks.  Upstairs most of it is still stained so for now that will all stay brown.

Painting trim.  My least favorite painting.  

Outside Travis requested a better border to make mowing around the flower beds with our push mower easier.  He's been working on some lovely brick edging on the weekends we are home and the weather is cooler.

Father's Day dumping wagon getting some good use

"No really, you go inside and blog.  I'm fine out here in the sweltering heat!"

Craftiness

I'm still working on my rusty sewing skills.  This week seemed like a good time to start, and hopefully finish, a wee project.  Enter, the doorway puppet theater.

FFM and pal Emma are fond of THE BIG PRODUCTION and whenever they get together I am entertained by endless puppet shows, pretend plays using bits and bobs from the dress up bin, and singing and dancing.  When they aren't paying attention, or demanding mine, I listen in to their imaginations run wild during play time - today, bubble party pirate escape while hunting for hidden treasure with a dash of pet thunderbolt tiger.

Currently they hide behind various pieces of medium to large sized furniture while staging their shows.  Like all kids they are growing and growing and growing and are quickly getting bigger than a lot of the furniture I'll let them crawl on.  I have some fabric stashed in the basement, remnants from another project long ago, and decided that while the kids were becoming world class contortionists as well as accomplished puppeteers that perhaps a legitimate theater was something I could pull off.

 It fits right inside the doorway with a tension rod and is totally kiddo friendly.  The curtains raise up and down and have tiny little velcro tie backs.  My favorite part?  The whole thing rolls up into a nifty little easily stored package.

my favorite part, the fringe that makes me think of decor in a real theater

I finished it up one night while FFM was in bed and left it in the doorway so he'd see it in the morning.  Of course I was immediately entertained with a show.
Here's Act III, Kangaroo of the Zoo.

It gets even better...I cut carefully and ended up with enough fabric that I could make an almost matching theater for Emma (curtains and bottom drape are reverse colors from FFM's).  Now there can be shows on BOTH sides of the greenbelt.  Let the drama begin!