I made the mistake a few days ago of telling Anna that we were now on summer vacation.
"We have to pack as soon as we get home!" she told me.
"No, we're not leaving on our trip until the end of July," I reminded her.
"But we should pack for all of July!" was the insistent retort. Apparently my mother's ways are rubbing off on the 4-year-old.
Rachel has been out of school since Thursday and so far we've packed a lot into our summer:
Day 1: A trip to the library to show off completed book reports in exchange for ballots to win prizes courtesy of the summer reading program. I believe that we also played board games. The girls borrowed the Wizard of Oz DVD from the library so we watched that and they mostly enjoyed it. Neither one of them was that thrilled with the scary parts and Rachel kept commenting on how different it was from the book. (We recently finished reading it out loud and the kids were excited when they found the DVD at the library.)
Day 2: Shul, then another trip to the library where Rachel won a prize in the draw. In true kid fashion, she selected a $2 dollar store set of plastic animals because it had an elephant in it. Never mind that there were gift cards for Chapters. Can you tell what I would have chosen? At any rate, Rachel was ecstatic about the newest addition to her elephant collection. Anna was firmly convinced that it was not fair that she didn't win. She'll have another chance this week. On the way home from the library, we drove around our neighbourhood counting things. Our final tally was as follows:
81 Canadian flags
2 red & white windsocks with maple leaves
1 Ontario flag
1 Swiss flag
1 Mickey Mouse
Sometimes it's better not to ask. The girls have been begging to go driving around counting things again. I think that might be a great rainy day activity!
Day 3: Canada Day
After very exciting trips to the bank, the grocery store, and the mall to pick up Rachel's piano books, we were ready to head to our friends' house for more Canada Day fun. The kids "swam" in the kiddie pools, explored our friends' huge (1 acre!) backyard and had a great time being loud and running around. After dinner, we headed to the park where Rachel discovered that she did in fact like the teeter-totter when her friend was on it with her. Then it was back to our friends' house for a campfire and fireworks.
I was quite pleased to discover that one of our friends' kids likes to set marshmallows on fire and eat them black and gooey, just like I remember doing when I was a kid. I was slightly less pleased when he took one of my marshmallows (just kidding, he totally had my permission to take it!), but his sister was very helpful and offered me one of her burnt ones since she didn't want it! Rachel and Anna were a little wary of roasting their own marshmallows but were happy to eat them.
There were sparklers for the kids and then a fireworks show to end the night. We were home a little before 11 p.m. and had the kids in bed shortly after. This was the first time that our kids have seen fireworks since it's really the first year that we've easily been able to keep the kids up late without major meltdowns. They slept in until 8 a.m. today and I expect that bedtime will be back to the usual 8-8:30 p.m. tonight! They were both complaining on the way home about how late it was and how they were tired and should be in bed. Let this hereby put to rest any doubts about whose children they really are! (Hi, Ben!)
Day 4: More board game fun was had this morning. The girls also completed more book reports in anticipation of tomorrow's trip to the library. Anna had swimming from 12:45-1:15 followed by a trip to the adjacent park & splash pad where a friend of ours joined them with his daughter. Ben just called to tell me that they're off to get free ice cream cones with our friend's coupons. Sounds like another great day to me!
