PINNED IT AND DID IT: Fun activities to keep your kids occupied when it's TOO HOT OUTSIDE

I love Summer! But sometimes there's just a little too much unstructured and unplanned time. When the kids have been going nuts, I've turned to our good friend Pinterest (and some of my favorite blogs) to find us something fun and easy to do. I LOVE activities that take little or no planning, and use things that we already have on hand. If you're looking for some, here are a few that worked GREAT.

Our first boredome buster was Dino Fossils from Little Bit Funky (who is doing a "40 Ideas: Activities to do with kids" this summer, she has some really good ideas already posted. Our next one from her is going to be the water balloon pinata - THAT is going to be a hit!):

We happened to have a bunch of crayola air drying clay left over from gifts Luke received long ago (if we did it again, we'd use another brand, Crayola is too squishy). And of course we're certainly not short on dinosaurs or tiny animals to make the fossils from. The boys loved this, and wanted to keep the fossils with the animals to use as a matching game. I was planning on having them just do a few fossils each (maybe 6?) But they loved it, so we made one for every animal we had, and used up our store of clay.

 

Secondly (and an even BIGGER hit): Straw Rockets. 

I have had this pinned for a while, I pinned it myself from Ucreate, and then one of my favorite craft bloggers (I Am Momma Hear Me Roar) made them with her kids too.So a few afternoons ago, when the kids were driving each other crazy, and it was WAY too hot to play outside, we got out our paper and crayons and went to town.

This takes no time at all, involves things you're likely to have on hand, and the kids can entertain themselves for hours blowing them off straws once you're done.

 Win-win.

A day at the (children's) museum

We spent this morning at the Lincoln Children's Museum with our friends Brooke & Sarah. If you were guessing what the highlight was, any number of these things seem like they'd be a good guess:

The big red chair (which Micah was slightly afraid of...)

The rotating display this summer is CONSTRUCTION, complete with ride-on bulldozers.

Football! How cute is our little Husker!

 The Police Boda Boda would be a really good guess...

This was more for me... I have this same picture from when T was 18 months old. Love it.

Sarah didn't want to be in the picture...except maybe she did.

 My highlight for sure: I almost broke my own elbow grabbing my camera to catch this:

But no. The highlight for the boys was the construction going on a block from the museum. We stood there and watched for a looooooong time. And then...

 The awesome guy driving the backhoe waved the kids over and asked if they wanted to get in. Ummmm...YES.

 After the boys finished, the workers asked if "la nina" wanted in too - Yes indeed!

I can't believe how nice those construction workers were - they just MADE our kids' day. Micah was just totally in awe, and the other two were pretty excited as well.

And when we got home... Little mister CRASHED.

A good time was had by ALL.

Fun at the CWS

One of our family's favorite summer traditions is the College World Series. We live an hour fromOmaha, home of the CWS, and Matt has been going with his dad since he was in high school. Matt's dad and stepmom have season tickets now, and we are so thankful for their generosity to invite and include us! Matt and Luke have been able to go to several games, it's been fun these last few years now that Luke is actually into the game and not just the food! And that he's not playing baseball himself, because his baseball schedule has really limited our availability in the past. But the little boys were feeling a bit left out. We were so thankful that George and Renae were able to find 3 extra tickets so that we could all go today, to see Kent State beat Florida (Always happy to see a Florida team lose, I have no idea why!)

The little boys were very excited... For about the first two innings. Then... They were hot, bored, tired and hungry. But it was a great game and the rest of us enjoyed it!

A year ago today...

I can hardly believe this....but 1 year ago today, I checked my email as I was leaving the Y and had a message saying we'd been matched with a 2 year old boy.... Hours later, thanks to my friend Brooke, we saw this sweet face for the first time...