Taking the Summer off

At the end of the spring, I made the decision to take off work for the summer to hang out with my children. For the past two and a half years, I have been working non-stop day and night. In fact, if I did not have my lap top on my lap, my children would ask about it.

This summer has really been amazing and has given me a chance to reconnect with my beautiful children. The best part about this summer so far has been having the ability to hang out and do absolutely nothing except for being with each other as well as the opportunity to be spontaneous.

I signed each child up for a week of summer day camp in staggered weeks so that I could spend some special alone time with each one. My daughter had her special week first while my son was in dinosaur camp. We really had a wonderful time ice skating, playing put put golf, eating ice cream, bungee jumping in the mall and working on art projects. The expression on her face was pure joy from the one on one attention and that was the best.

This week is my son's turn and today we ate ice cream, bungee jumped at the mall and watched a scary program about sharks. I am really looking forward to the rest of the week with him. I believe he will really benefit from this special week with mommy because he is such a touchy feely kind of guy.

While we only have a few weeks left of summer, I am definitely going to relish the time that we have left. I know that when we get back into the grind, I too will be very busy and our summer of bliss will come to a halt.

Building an Obstacle Course for my Son's 5th Birthday

Somewhere along the way, my son saw people trying to complete an obstacle course. I think it was on t.v. on one of those kids shows. People were falling down, getting knocked into the water and tripping into mud pitts and my son loved it. We noticed that he started trying to build his own obstacle courses around the house and constantly wanting to talk about them.

It only seemed fitting that we build him an obstacle course for his birthday party. We reserved the local park pavillion and started planning. In this case, it is kind of tricky because we don't want anyone to get hurt and these little guys are so accident prone. Here is what we have come up with so far:

- crawling through a 5 ft. long tunnel that rolls around on the grass
- hopping through inflatable tires
- crawling through a tunnel of balloons (made by attaching lots of balloons to a folding table)
- zig zagging through orange cones while getting shot by water guns
- driving a toddler little tikes car that is too small for these guys (the kind that you use your feet to go) from point A to B
- kicking a soccer ball into the net

We are still coming up with the course and hopefully will have a few more ideas. I will post an update with pictures as soon as the party happens. Wish us luck!