Slip-n-Slide Fun

So...I love fall and winter. Summer heat...not such a fan. I've told people - and I really think it's true - if I had visited North Carolina in the summer, I probably wouldn't have moved here. Before Grant, I could just hide away inside moving from one air conditioned space to another. But not anymore. Also, the kid seems oblivious to the heat. I'm getting better though. More tolerant (or tolerable?). 

I usually try to come up with at least one water activity in the summer that I can participate in that will be fun for Grant and cool us both off. Last year for his birthday, my mother-in-law got him an Iron Man slip-n-slide that my hectic schedule didn't let us make use of. But it's definitely been hot enough lately so I got it out a couple weeks ago. Grant had no idea what to do with it, so I tried to explain it. But it was easier for me to just demonstrate.

Grant asked if he could take a picture of me doing the
slip-n-slide. I take so many of him, it was only fair.

I learned three things after my first turn on the slide: a) slip-n-slides are fun no matter how old you are; b) it's a bit terrifying as an adult to throw yourself on the ground and hope it's going to work correctly but you can't chicken out when your kid is watching; and c) don't land too hard on your chest or your knees - trust me.

He didn't actually go anywhere, he just threw himself on the slide.

Even after my enthusiastic demonstration, Grant refused to slide on his belly. His knees, yes (which looked painful to me!), but not his belly. I even had him lay on the slide and I pushed him along, to show him how fun it is. Nothing.

Ouch!

But he was having fun so I tried to stop coaxing him into sliding on his belly.

But day two of the slip-n-slide, I noticed him sliding forward, so I told him to just go all the way down and try to go on his belly.

Hooray! Kinda.

Very excited about his belly slide!

After that, he was unstoppable. And by the third time we used the slide (the following weekend), Grant was a sliding pro and my knees were so bruised up I can't believe I was still walking.

He got going a bit fast on this one!

My personal injuries aside, this has been a pretty wonderful way to ward off the heat!

And Grant has been having a blast! A few days after we first used the slide, Grant had to stay home sick and by the afternoon he was begging to go out on the slip-n-slide (Um...no). We're definitely going to have to keep one of these around at all times for the summer!

Seriously with the face! He's so happy...who cares if I'm
without knee caps by the end of summer :)

High Five for Friday

Hi there! Today I'm linking up with Jennie to share some fun stuff from the past week. 

1) Saturday we were supposed to go see some hot air balloons but we found out when we got to the parking lot that it was too windy for them to fly (or even inflate). It was a pretty big let-down. But I did score my first ever trip to Hobby Lobby (and I can't wait to go back) and we hit the new Cabela's for the first time too.

Grant and I really enjoyed Hobby Lobby! Husband behaved
himself and tolerated it while silently willing me to leave.

Cabela's was fun to explore. Grant loved the aquarium
and the camping section made me want to go camping so bad!

2) I started loom knitting. Usually when it comes to yarn crafts I am completely inept. But this loom knitting thing is great! I started my first scarf Saturday afternoon and took it outside to sit at the picnic table while Grant played in the sandbox fought bad guys. Just as I was getting done with my first thingy of yarn and was about to head in to attach the second, a bird pooped on my head. But at least it didn't get on my scarf! I'm currently working on my 4th scarf, I love it!

Grant fighting bad guys while I figure out the knitting.

My first scarf! 

2nd scarf! (This is not for him but he was
 tolerant of being my model.) 

3rd scarf! (My 4th one is going to be like the 2nd one
 becauseI bought more of that yarn)

3) Sunday I knew we were going to throw something on the grill for dinner. So I enlisted Grant's help in making some mac & cheese.

He's a very good helper (just ask him)

4) Before dinner on Sunday (after getting the mac & cheese ready) I decided to bust out the slip-n-slide that Grant got for his birthday last year. To the best of my knowledge, this was a first for him and he was a bit apprehensive about it (strange for a boy who is constantly throwing himself around the living room to demonstrate his "ninja moves"). For the life of me, I could not get him to slide on his belly. Even after I demonstrated - several times - how it's done.

It didn't matter, he had fun anyway!

Monday afternoon I decided to forgo cooking dinner in favor of another afternoon on the slip-in-slide. And FINALLY got Grant to slide on his belly! Because I take  bunches of pictures of him, he insisted that he take one of me. It seemed only fair. We had so much fun playing on that thing! I hope the weather is nice this weekend so we can do it again (I don't care how old you are, slip-n-slides are fun!).

Mama on the slip-n-slide!

Finally sliding on his belly!

5) I had a sick boy on my hands this week. It came out of nowhere and didn't last long. By Wednesday afternoon this was happening in my house:

Pirate fireman Leonardo, at your service.

 6) Yesterday our first full sized Kiwi Crate arrived! We had a blast with the mini one I tested so I'm excited to explore the box this weekend and see what we get to do.

I think we're going to have a really great weekend, if I survive tonight. Tonight is Grant's preschool graduation and I've already been in tears over it! We plan to do a little celebrating with him tomorrow (a special lunch at Chuck E Cheese) and have lots of fun over the weekend.

Happy Friday everyone!

Have a great weekend!

Fun with Fluffy Stuff

Confession: I love Pinterest. And I've gotten sooooo many ideas from there! (Not all worked out well, of course, but still.) Ages ago I saw "fluffy stuff" on there, pinned it, and forgot about it (source: Play Create Explore). I have no idea why I re-came across it but I picked up the few ingredients for it the next time I was at a store and decided to save them for a rainy day.

Literally. The week after Easter I think it rained just about every day. My sister had sent Grant a bunch of stuff, one thing being a foam airplane that he was dying to fly outside. Every day on his way out the door he'd ask to fly the plane that night after dinner and we would tell him "Yes, if it's not raining" and every night it rained. Poor kid. So one of those nights I surprised him with Fluffy Stuff. To say it was a hit would be the understatement of the year!

That's all you need!

• 2 - 16 ounce packages of corn starch
• 1 can of shaving cream {foam}
• a big bucket or bowl

I used all store brand ingredients ($3-$4 total). I did buy the bucket thing ($5) because I didn't think I had a good container for it. The only thing is that the "stuff" had a tendency to sneak out of the handle holes but it really wasn't a big deal.

Here's what you do:

• Empty your corn starch into the bucket:
  
• Empty the entire can of shaving cream into the bucket:
  
• Let a very happy and excited kid mix it all together and play!

  

  Do you see that smile? He was so excited.

Right after he went to town with the mixing, I got out a spatula to help. Grant immediately shouted "I WANT TO DO THAT! I WANT TO DO THAT!" and I just let him go to town.

Monster trucks got involved.

And there was just a whole lot of happiness.

He played with this stuff for an hour and a half, only stopping because it was bath time. When Husband told him he needed to get ready for his bath, Grant replied "Um...I think I'll play for a bit longer." Which, as you can imagine, didn't go over well. That aside, I was happy that this stuff worked and to see how much fun he had with it!

Notes/Suggestions:

• I always lay down a large towel under the container when we do activities like this or the indoor sandbox. 
• I stored the stuff in air-tight container for future play.
• I think this would be great outside but it was an awesome rainy day inside activity.
• In the link where I got this "recipe", she colored hers and let her kids have a "snowball fight" which would be so fun! But Grant had a blast just playing in it too and making his own little Monster Jam rally. 

Linking up for
Made by you Monday!

High Five for Friday

Happy 4th of July! Today I'm linking up with Lauren and Jennie to share some of my favorite stuff from the past week.

1) Friday night for dinner I made chicken gyros for dinner with a homemade version of that yummy cucumber dressing stuff. It was a really yummy summery type meal and we had some great corn on the cob with it. Gotta love a meal that pleases all of us! (I used the recipe in THIS POST for the tzatziki sauce)

2) On Saturday we went to a birthday party at a place called Jumpin' Jax for one of Grant's school chums. He had such great time and it was so fun to see playing with so many of his friends from school.

If there is an inflatable slide around, Grant will find it.

Winning tickets on the basketball game!

3) Saturday night, Grant spent the night with his Gramma & Grandpa. So Husband and I went out to dinner, ate too much, went home and rented Monuments Men (and then caught up on NCIS that we've had recorded for months). We're real party animals, huh? 

4) After checking it out several times on Pinterest, I bought stuff to try out ice cream in a baggie. Grant has only recently become an ice cream eater but I thought he'd have fun shaking the bag at the very least. I followed THIS RECIPE but used a quart size bag and doubled the recipe (since I had planned on the three of us digging into it). I couldn't believe it actually worked! Grant was excited about the whole process (especially the eating) and it was really yummy ice cream! We decided to just eat it out of the bag instead of being polite with a bowl and what-not. This weekend we may give chocolate a try!

5) For a couple years now I've been on a hunt for a Derek Jeter jersey that wasn't too expensive (I'm cheap about stuff like this). We don't go to too many baseball games but I thought it would be fun to wear when we go, especially now that Grant has a Yankees jersey. With Jeter retiring this year, I know I won't get to see him play in a game but I still wanted one of his jerseys. Wednesday evening when I got home, there was a box on the table and inside was........a Jeter jersey! Husband surprised me :)

I can't wait to go to a baseball game with it! 

Happy Friday!

Happy 4th of July!!
Have a great weekend!

Grant & Mama Day

I hadn't had a day off with Grant in a while. I mean, we have weekends of course. But I decided it was time for a random day off, just the two of us. So I took last Friday off and called it Grant & Mama Day. I talked it up with Grant quite a bit and eventually, I think he thought it was a real holiday. Thursday he asked "Is it Grant & Mama Day now?" and he was super excited when he woke up Friday morning to find it was finally the day.

We took ourselves to the Museum of Life & Science in Durham. Grant loves this place and since it takes about an hour to get there, it's not a place we frequent. They have all sorts of different play spaces (inside and out) plus animals, bugs, and a train. 

When we go we always start with the outside stuff first...it's just more fun.

Tunnels...

Bells & chimes...

Drums. Good stuff.

And we found the water spout play area that
wasn't open when we went last year (too early in the season).

We were wandering and trying to take our time since we had an hour before our train ride. I didn't want to stray too far from the train station. So Grant played in the sandbox before we moved on to the farm animals.

We really need a sandbox at home.

This guy (or gal) was my favorite but they had goats, donkeys,
a cow, some pot bellied pigs, and an owl.

We also checked out the bug building that has an exhibit of some rather big spiders that aren't behind glass. It's always a little off-putting. But there is worse stuff in there and that is behind glass so I'm not going to complain too much. They also have a room there with a crap load of butterflies. You just walk through...and they land on you...and I don't like it. But Grant wanted to do it. So I obliged.

So he just stood there after seeing others do it, waiting for a butterfly to land on him...while they were dive-bombing me and I was ducking like a maniac. At the end there is a huge mirror with a sign asking you to check for "hitchhikers". Thankfully we had none so I didn't have to cause a scene. After the bug building we did a quick run of the dinosaur trail before our train ride. 

He did this funny voice and said to me
"Oooooh...what's behind me?!"

So at noon it was time to ride the train. And my guy loves some trains. It's just a little one but it goes around their track twice and it wasn't too crowded. Grant was excited to pick our seat and screamed really loud (like the conductor told us to) when we went through the tunnel.

Waiting for the train to go!

We grabbed a brief lunch at their "cafe". Thankfully, it wasn't super crowded and I ate fast because I let Grant have lemonade with lunch...which upset his stomach launching a meltdown and him telling me - not quietly - that he had to throw up. We sat outside in a quiet spot for a bit so I could calm him down. He was more upset because he thought we'd have to go home. I knew the culprit was the lemonade so once he was calm and telling me he felt better (I could tell he was actually feeling better), I decided to stay. And he was fine after that, thank goodness.

We made our way down by the "wetlands" which is also where the bears and wolves are. Both were rather scarce and I can only assume that's because of the hoards of overly loud school children screaming "HEY BEAR! COME 'ERE BEAR! WHERES THE BEAR?! HEY BEAR!" I can't believe that didn't get his attention. But we did manage to catch a glimpse of both and lots of turtles in the swampy area. They also had this nifty stream thing set up with lots of rocks so you could move them around to create different water patters.

Grant was pretty taken with it. Rocks and water and you're allowed to play with both. He stayed there playing for a bit but then we were inundated with those overly loud school children who sort of took over (because when your parents aren't around you don't have to use manners), so we left that area. We checked out the lemurs but Grant was ready to keep on playing so we moved on to their "wind" exhibits. There is a raised pond with sail boats - which we couldn't figure out - and this bit crane thing that you put giant seeds on so you can see how the wind catches the seeds. And the MIST. Oh boy, the mist. We could have gone straight there and skipped everything else I think (except the dinosaurs). I didn't know mist came out of the ground there, last time we were there it was too chilly for them to have things like that going. Grant had a blast!

Checking out the mist

He told me "I want to run and play in it!"

It was a warm and humid day so that mist felt GREAT. There was another section of it when you walked farther back with all these little hills. I thought Grant might get a little nervous there because the mist got so heavy we lost sight of each other a few times. But he was good and had so much fun! Note to self: there were a lot of kids in swim clothes, a good idea next time because Grant got happily soaked.

Back behind the misty area there was even more to play on and in!

Happy :)

I generally keep an extra outfit with me and Grant said yes when I asked him if he wanted to change. So we did that and then slowly made our way back toward the exit to maybe beat the traffic home. By that time the school groups had filtered out and Grant was asking to check out the dinosaurs again. We basically had the place to ourselves, it was great!

Digging for fossils - and we found some!

He told me he had to tell the "Rudy dinosaur" something (if you
haven't seen the 3rdinstallment of the Ice Age movies then
you won't know who Rudy is). Then he saw him and went "ROOOAAARRR!"

Grant asked for a snack in the car - understandably hungry since lunch was cut kind of short- and right after that he passed out.

When he woke up from that much needed nap (I could have used one too) I was pulling into the parking lot of our new favorite place: Pelican's SnoBalls. These things are GREAT! And it was the perfect way to end Grant & Mama Day :)