Summer Days, Part Three

This one’s gonna be a doozy. We have done SO much during the last four weeks. But it’s just about all over; Riley starts school next Thursday.

Hallelujah.

Okay, so picking up where we left off, our next fun outing was with Diana and Alcee at the Cool Zoo. (Dana had a really busy week at work, so we unfortunately didn’t see Claire and Colin.) It was super hot, so being in the lazy river was really nice. It was quite a workout for me having to hold onto Rory, but he had a great time. However, he did get distracted a few times by the construction happening adjacent to the Cool Zoo. That boy just loves big machines.

It’s a good thing the kids preferred the lazy river: the splash area of the Cool Zoo was shut down almost the entire time we were there. We’re not really sure what happened, but we were mighty disappointed that whole area wasn’t even an option.

The next week we went to Matthew’s house for a super fun backyard playdate. Wendy had two baby pools and an inflatable waterslide all set up and ready to go for the kids, and everyone brought something to share for lunch.

  

We ended up being there for almost 7 hours. The kids splashed and played, Wendy made a few different fun {adult} drink options, and Riley found Matthew’s Darth Vader mask when we moved inside. (He also spent a good 20 minutes sitting at the table and coloring with Matthew. I was so impressed with his drawing of a TIE fighter! See if you can spot it in the picture below.)

And did I mention that the Darth Vader mask is voice changing? Yeah. Riley totally asked to take it home with us.

But then he wanted to wear the princess crown instead, so he and Claire switched. Priceless. Such a fun day.

Riley spent a few nights at Grandma and Grandpa’s the next week, and Claire and Alcee were in dance camp. So Rory and I did something fun on our own, with a few moms and kids from Jazzercise. We went to the Lafreniere Park splash pad for the first time. Rory had a blast playing with Leighton, Jackson, and Nicholas. He looked SO big next to them.

  

 

 

We haven’t done this nearly as much as I thought we would, but we met Aunt E and Kate for snoballs one afternoon a couple of weeks ago.

We have also been seeing QP fairly regularly this summer, and she introduced the kids to a new game: the Jellybean Game. Riley is really good at it.

But perhaps our busiest day of the summer was this past Tuesday. I had planned one special morning outing, but we ended up going to a total of three different places in a span of 4 hours. Whew.

We started out at a new donut shop near our house called Cop A Donut. The sweet smell of sugar hit me as soon as I opened my car door. Yum.

We went there because they offer an option for kids to make their own donuts. I had been seeing lots of donut-making playdate pictures on Facebook, and I thought my two would enjoy doing the same. So we got a group of 10 kids together and went to have some fun.

The kids were given aprons and hats to wear while they pretended to be little bakers. Colin declined, Matthew and Sophia were a bit late arriving, and Kate refused to even enter the little room where we were, but the other seven kids put on the gear. They were all so darn cute in their get-ups but I think Rory took the prize.

 

Aunt E bought Kate a pre-made donut from the case out front (to which she later added a few sprinkles), but everyone else got their hands dirty and made their own.

 

Each kid was given a lump of dough, a rolling pin, and a donut cutter. They had so much fun rolling out their dough and cutting donuts out of it. Lots of flour and dough ended up on the floor (and Riley even licked flour off his hands, declaring it “salty but good!”), but not to worry: the staff discarded the kid-handled dough and fried a batch of fresh donuts for them to ice and decorate. Good call.

 

 

We had two different kinds of icing and 5 different toppings to use in decorating the cooked donuts. Riley chose to use strawberry icing, sprinkles, fruity pebbles, oreos, and marshmallows on his donut, while I gave Rory chocolate icing and sprinkles for his. They each made a masterpiece!

It was certainly an enjoyable morning, but the process was a bit unorganized and inefficient. And I’m not sure if $10 isn’t too much. But it was something new to do and the kids seemed to have a great time.

However, we decided that they needed to run off some of the sugar, so we headed to Palm Tree Playground and let them go wild for about an hour.

Then since it was lunchtime we kept the fun going and went to Chick-Fil-A, where all of the kids ate pretty good lunches and then played even more.

What a day. What a summer. It hasn’t been perfect (far from it), but I’m happy with all of the fun things we’ve managed to squeeze into twelve weeks. I hope my boys are too.

Now it’s time to switch back into school mode. Riley’s first day of kindergarten is on Thursday.

Oh, and by the way, he’s already complaining about having to go back. “Mama, I just don’t like all of the work that school is. It’s just so much work!”

It may be a very long school year. Stay tuned!