Summer Fun

Every summer I start out with wonderful intentions to do amazing activities with my kids, and the truth is, we do a few "fun" things and then I just get caught up in the the busy-ness of life; taking care of the yard, garden, running kids to swim lessons, etc. Before I know it, the summer is gone, and we ended up with a summer of same-ol -same -ol.

Once again, I have decided that THIS is going to be the Summer of Fun! Since I have now proclaimed it as such on my blog, I better live up to it or you all can haunt me.

We have already done a few "fun" things, but I'll start out by sharing our Family Fun Night last night.

After Byran got home from work, we all ran to the video store to rent some movies. On the way back I got a wild hair and decided that we should all go swimming at the Club House. So we spent the next hour swimming. I got the shock of the cold water over by just jumping in this time (instead of my usual trying to work my way in slowly and then giving up because I'm a whimp because the water is too cold and spending the rest of the time watching the fun from the sidelines). We had a lot of fun and even Mom participated in the crazy jumps off the side of the pool.

We had Kyler's favorite dinner: grilled hot dogs and mac-n-cheese, out on the picnic table, as requested by Karissa.

Inspired by my sister RuthAnn, I talked Byran into setting up the tent in the backyard for us all to sleep in. He laughed at me (like, "Yeah, that is going to work, all of us sleeping in the tent all night) but was a real sport and humored me anyway. Way to go Byran! The kids were really excited, and so was I. Regardless of what the outcome may be, we were going to make fun family memories, dang it!

Next, we made S'mores in the microwave...and filled out "All About Me" questioneers that I got off of http://www.chocolateonmycranium.blogspot.com/. The kids' answers were somewhat predictable, but it was fun to focus on each one of them and they loved answering the questions.

PJ time, and into the tent! We watched "Snow Buddies" on Byran's laptop. Ky was out before the show was over. Everyone settled down quickly and were off to dreamland. I know because I was still awake, listening to everyone sleeping and snoring, and the sprinklers coming on in the park behind us, the helicopter flying over us, and the cars on the road by us......and then I began to feel my self slowly, ever so slowly, sinking to the hard ground as the air in our mattress leaked out.

About this time I rolled over and looked at Byran who was now wide awake. He smiled and said, "That was fun, ready to go in?" He was able to convince me pretty quickly that the fun family memories had been made and that we would all enjoy them much more if we had a good night's sleep, inside.

And we did.