Thursday, March 28, 2013

Day 4: fluffy stuff! and bubbles! and twisty slides!

Today's breakfast was an uninteresting but yummy oatmeal. You can't have syrup every day, even on vacation.

Today's fun thing was "Fluffy Stuff," another fun idea from Pinterest that I've been saving for a while. After I put Caroline down for a nap this morning I got out 2 boxes of cornstarch and a bottle of shaving cream. Erin had my big mixing bowl and Luke had a plastic bin that usually holds baking and cooking toys. They each emptied a whole box of cornstarch and then I started shooting shaving cream into their bowls. At first it was sort of sticky but once it got mixed together it was pretty awesome. It looks like white sand, but you can pack it together and it won't fall apart. They used the cooking toys from Luke's bin and played with it for over an hour and a half while I did dishes, 3 loads of laundry, cleaned the bathroom, took a shower and talked to my friend Aimie for a while on the phone (something I rarely do) - pretty good trade-off for the mess it made, and I had planned on vacuuming later anyway. The only thing that I didn't like was the smell, which was overpowering. Is there such a thing as fragrance-free shaving cream because I will definitely be looking for that if we do this again. It was too cold to open the window so I baked a cake and lit a candle.

Unfortunately I just realized that the pictures I took of them playing with this were also deleted when I updated my iPhone. Stupid.

After Caroline woke up we had lunch and then (finally) took a walk to a park we hadn't been to before. We had to cross the bridge over the train tracks, which was fun since we usually just go to the middle, wait for a train and then go back. The playground was probably about 2 miles from our house. Luke rode his bike, Caroline rode in the stroller and Erin walk/ran the whole way. That girl is going to run cross country some day - and she's fast, too.

The park wasn't really spectacular, but it was different for us and the kids had fun. Here are finally some pictures I DIDN'T erase:



Luke and Erin really liked this slide since it was almost vertical - they pretended they were cannon balls.




Caroline LOVES slides. I like the twisty kind because they're a little safer in terms of not falling over the side.




 


Snack time.


I love it when they do things together.

It was pretty cold so we didn't stay long. Also, since it is Maundy Thursday we have church tonight. Alec and I decided that this year I would go on Thursday and he will go to the Tenebrae service tomorrow night. Erin and Luke wanted to go along and we agreed that Erin would go with me tonight (I lobbied for that since it is communion and she's never seen communion before - she usually goes out to the children's class before the sermon) and Luke will go tomorrow with Alec.

Erin and Caroline got in the tub as soon as we got home - Luke played with them and the bubble blowers for a few minutes. You probably can't tell in any of these pictures but Erin wanted me to curl her hair today. It is SO straight and really doesn't hold much curl, but after I was finished it was so pretty that I blow-dried it and curled it again after her bath.

After leftovers for supper, Erin and I went to church. I'd forgotten to prepare her for what would happen during the service and she was a little bit noisy with her questions, but I convinced her to keep quiet and we would talk about it on the way home. Mostly they were of the "why can't I have that?" variety when the bread was passed around. She was a little put out that we passed the bread in front of her, but I think she understood a little bit about why she couldn't have it yet. She definitely knew what it symbolized and I'm glad she came with me, even though it was pretty late when we got home.

No comments: