Saturday, July 20, 2013

On pinterest I found a sweet idea for making sidewalk paint. Followed the woman's recipe for mixing cornstarch, water and food coloring. She included pictures of her daughters helping her mix the 'paint', wrote that it kept her kids entertained for an hour, and included lovely pictures of the flowers and rainbows they had painted. Well I thought it would be fun to see some sweet rainbows on our sidewalk. and in reality.....

I didn't include the pics of the cornstarch spilled on the freshly cleaned floor but within 14 seconds of being outside, the boys were pouring the paint. 

flicking the paint. 

excuse me while my camera accidentally takes a picture as I lunge to get the kids to stop flicking paint in each others' hair

me giving up on keeping them from flicking paint

and it was flung onto the screen door which of course left a lovely flicked paint pattern on the door and the rug and floor inside the house. 

and now since all is lost, let's just paint ourselves. 

Another inspired art project that kept their interest for 4 minutes, led to tears, and took 30 minutes to clean up.  Yep, I also think it's time for me to write the 'how to do it right' parenting book. 

Thursday, July 04, 2013

snapshots from Noah's camping weekend... the weekend before Lucas's..

This was also the weekend of the big storm in Mpls. Stunning number of huge trees downed.... several on every block in our neighborhood including our next door neighbor's.  The storm was slightly less dramatic where we were camping but the kids were THRILLED when the 'campground host' came by and told us we needed to go to the visitors center until the storm passed. A very wet very wonderful weekend.
kids putting up the kid's play tent

mosquitoes were quite bad this year....


we create relay obstacle courses for the kids to complete

and the LOVE creating plays for us...we usually give them 3 things that need to be in the play - they are hilarious and so creative


displaying the weekend's war wounds. mosquitoes won. 

Monday, July 01, 2013

this past weekend - camping trip with Lucas, Caroline, and Lynn