Summer at home

Miles is in a not-so-pleasant-in-the-car stage, it appears. The last couple longer trips with him were pretty miserable, so it's made us shift our thoughts and plans for this summer. We had ideas about going to the mountains, and going to the beach, and doing to a few field trips a couple hours away... and we're shelving all those intentions for a future season.

Sooo.... we've been staying home much more than we usually do in a summer! And the good side of that is that we have more time to just do ordinary things around the house.


Like... Salad Spinner Art!

While Strider was at a friend's house recently, the younger kids and I started experimenting with paint and our salad spinner. It turned out to be a lot of fun -- and a bit of a mess, of course.



Here are the final products.:

Other activities are generated by the kids, like this TRAIN:

...And we've had plenty of time for good ol' popsicles. (And by "good" I mean "healthy" of course. :) ) Here's Miles trying one for the first time yesterday: It was a hit!

And speaking of HIT, this was the scene on that very same patio a few hours later, after a TORNADO apparently hit the neighborhood right next to ours last night!

Part of our chimney was blown off the roof, and a lot of limbs, chairs, etc. blew around the yard. Strider tried to go out in the midst of it all to collect some hail, but was pelted so hard he couldn't get out the door (thankfully). The roads leading out of the neighborhood still look pretty crazy with a lot of trees down, roof-work being done on many houses, etc.

So we're thankful our home is still safe, and that we're having good times in it this summer.