Rained Out

Today the rain ruined our plans, but it turned out to be a very fun night. We were supposed to go camping, but, like I said, the weather had plans of its own. Noah was so excited to go camping, and I didn't want to disappoint him, so we had a campout in the kids' room.

We fashioned a tent by attaching a blanket to the crib and the dresser. I layed out blankets and pillows and Noah's sleeping bag for a little bed. But I didn't want to stop there. I didn't want Noah to miss out on the things he was so looking forward to doing.

While Dad distracted them, I taped pictures of animals to the wall that I'd printed off the Internet or drawn myself. Then I told Noah that even though we didn't get to go see the animals in the mountains, they came to our house! I turned off all the lights and had him bring his flashlight on our animal hunt. He had so much fun searching for the animals I'd hidden throughout the upstairs. Once he found them all, he wanted to find them again and again. Clara loved it too, especially the owl (she loves owls!). I was a huge hit, and I think I will laminate the pictures so we can have those pictures around for another rainy day.

After the animal hunt, I hurried and drew a picture of a campfire and cut it out. Then, I made s'mores in the microwave (recipe at the bottom). I took the fire and s'mores to our campground, taped the fire to Noah's dresser and we ate s'mores around the campfire. Noah said, "I love rain." I think what he meant by that was, "I'm glad it rained so we could have a campout in my room." I am too!

After that we got ready for bed and gathered again "around" the campfire and sang songs like, "If Your Happy," "Popcorn," and "Itsy Bitsy Spider." Then we read a whole stack of books by the firelight (flashlight). Then we had prayers and said goodnight.

In theory, they were supposed to go to sleep, but the excitement was too much for Clara. She was quite silly, but it was fun. I let them be silly and play for awhile, until a little while later I had to take down the tent just for tonight so that Clara could sleep without fun distractions.

This ended up being so much fun! We would not have had this much fun in the mountains. Or, maybe we would have, but it would have been a different kind of fun. There's something about sleeping under a homemade tent at home when you're a kid. Seeing Noah experience that was pure bliss. We wouldn't have had this experience if the weather had cooperated the way we thought we wanted it to. I hope we have more campouts that get rained out.




Microwave S'mores

Large marshmallows
fudge striped shortbread cookies

Place one marshmallow on a cookie. Put in microwave for about 15 seconds. Immediately place other cookie on top to make the sandwich; press hard. Eat! (Don't stop at one, either!)

Thursday Activity: Playing with Jell-O!

I know it's Friday, but I have a fun activity to share that I've been meaning to blog about but haven't done. I haven't been in a huge blogging mood lately, which is very weird for me. Anyway, here's the fun activity. Enjoy!

The activity is another one from The Toddler's Busy Book by Trish Kuffner. It's on page 138, and it's called Jell-O Jumping. Here are the EASY instructions:

• 4 large packages of Jell-O


• baby bathtub (or any kind of tub or big bowl)


• Prepare Jell-O according to package directions. Place it in a bathtub or small basin and let your child stand in it, sit in it, run his fingers through it, or paint with it.

This was so much fun! Clara was a little skeptical at first, but she loved it. She was very girly about how she played with it, while the boys (Noah's best friend also joined in on the fun) dug right in just as boys do. They all had fun smooshing the Jell-O between their fingers, standing in it, eating it (Oh, well. What can ya do?), and I think the boys even threw it at each other. We had the sprinkler on so they could easily clean off, although they all definitely needed a bath. That in itself was fun because the red Jell-O turned the bath water pink.

Some tips:

• take the Jell-O out of the fridge and let it warm up a little before you let your kids play in it. Ours was quite cold.
• 4 packages was oodles! If you only have one child, 2 packages will probably be fine.
• do this on a day when you have nothing to do and don't care about making a mess.

Hope you try it! It was a lot of fun!

Please feel free to share any of your favorite summertime activities. Thanks!