D&H Summer Games, Day 3

We kept it a little more key today. One of my intended games had failed miserably (no thanks to my miserable attempts at dismantling a large climbing toy to use for said game) so we did two smaller games today. 

Today's agenda:

1. Water Balloon Home Run Derby
2. North Pole Bowling

The first game was the Home Run Derby. It's ridiculously simple. Take a tball stand. Fill up a bucket or two of water balloons. Place a water balloon on the tball stand (be careful!). Let the kids swing away. There are no basemen, no fouls, no outs (though I think you could incorporate some sort of "out" for older kids to make it interesting). Just swing and watch the balloon detonate on impact. Next kid takes a turn, etc. There's no real point to it other than the sheer awesomeness of blasting a water balloon with a bat. 

My lefty in our midsummer classic

The second game was a unique form of bowling. Last night I froze some water balloons in the freezer. You know what that makes? Rock hard water balloons. There isn't a whole lot you can do with frozen water balloons, because you know if you throw them at people it kind of hurts and stuff. So we played bowling for a bit, until the kids found it much more fun to throw them at the sidewalk and watch them shatter. Hey, if it keeps them happy.

Bowling. Clearly Calen is better at baseball than bowling.

The aftermath. It's kind of a violent sport, isn't it?

Hopefully, HOPEFULLY, the weather will hold out for day 4 tomorrow. It's supposed to rain and be all lame and only 73 degrees. Boo. 

I like how 73 is "too cold" for water activities now. We've been here too long. 

D&H Summer Games, Day 2

It was Day 2 of our Summer Games this afternoon. We only did two games today and spent the rest of the day in the pool. But we made those games count. 

Today's Agenda:

1. Water Relay Race
2. Watermelon Eating Contest

First up was the Relay Race. Since we only had three kids participating, we couldn't actually have teams so therefore it was actually a "relay" but more of just a full out Every Kid For Themselves deathmatch. 

But a "relay" sounds more official. And less intimidating than "deathmatch."

The game is stupid simple to set up. Get a big bucket. I used a 30 gallon bucket that we store our pool/beach toys in. Fill up big bucket with water and put on one side of the yard. Next, Get some smaller buckets (we used beach buckets), one for each participant, of the same size. Put them (empty) on the other side of the yard, the further away the more challenging/exhausting/fun. Next, take a plastic cup (one for each participant). Use a knife and poke two or three holes in the bottom of said cup. Did I mention these cups probably shouldn't be important? 

Now you're ready to play. The kids each take a cup and go to the start line, which is the large bucket full of water. When the whistle (or loud mouthed Mom yells "GO"), the kids dunk their cups in the water, put the leaking cup over their heads, and RUN to their respective small bucket across the yard and dump their water (or what's left of it) into their buckets. Run back to the large bucket, rinse and repeat. Literally. The first kid to fill their bucket wins. Their facial expressions are the best as the water drips down their face. It's tragically funny. For the moms anyway. 

Next was a tragically unoriginal watermelon eating contest. But you know nothing says summer like putting your hands behind your back and shoving your face into a slice of watermelon the size of your head. This was also the first event that Camden was awake for got to participate in so it made it that much more fun. 

The faces of champions

Camden forfeited and sh** got real.

We have a winner! Actually it was a DEAD tie with Sydney. I can't believe they ate that much. And then a full dinner

The D&H Summer Games, Day 1

I couldn't afford to send my kids to camp this year. 

Actually, that's a lie. I could afford it but they're too young. But it sounds more dramatic when I say that I was in some sort of financial peril about it. 

I'm in a strange mood tonight.

I thought it would be fun to create an at-home field day week kind of like what some summer camps have, without having to drive them to and from camp and spending $3010911 a week. Lots of games and crafts that are all outside, get the kids doing something other than play in the pool every.single.day this summer. And since my kids play with the neighbor girls every day anyways, we didn't even have to recruit kids to do it with.

Thus, The Duran-Hansen Summer Games were born. 

Actually, it's also a fantastic reason to exhaust the crap ton of summer Pinterest ideas that I have pinned. 

It was kind of cloudy and blah today, so I created an itinerary that only got them slightly wet:

Day 1 

- Sidewalk Chalk Color Course
- Water Balloon Hot Potato 
- Giant Water Pillow of Doom

We started off with a simple color coordinated sidewalk chalk game. I made several circles in three different colors going down the sidewalk. Each kid picked a color, then had to hop their way down the sidewalk, only touching their chosen color. And if they hit the yellow circles, they got sprayed with a Super Soaker wielded by a mom (we needed a reason to turn the water guns on the kids. And they can't argue. It's the RULES). 

Unfortunately I made it a little too easy for the kids, so we just sprayed them for fun. But they had fun with it. 

Note that the girls are carrying pistols. This is why Calen is way okay with playing with girls.

After they got bored with this game, we did a little classic Hot Potato with water balloons. And they got just a little wet. If only you could hear the giggles. 

Next was the Giant Water Pillow Of Doom. Or something along those lines. I made this thing last year and it was such a big hit with the Under-Eight crowd that random kids I didn't even know would show up and start playing on it. Without my permission by the way. But who am I to say no to kids having fun on a giant choking hazard?

We made it in the back yard this year to prevent stranger weirdlies from showing up and asking "Just what is that thing anyways?" 50 times in an hour. We did put blue food coloring in it but it didn't seem to stay, but it was full of glitter. There are no rules to it, just jump, rolls, stomp on it whatever. It's like if you owned a water bed, but your mom never allowed you to jump/screw around on it. Well now your dreams have come true. 

Leaping onto the water pillow

He kept saying he was dead

Cam says "you can't make me step onto this creepy water trap"

"Okay, maybe I'll play on it. After I remove my shirt and eat some food coloring"

WE INTERRUPT THIS BROADCAST FOR A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

During our escapades in the back this afternoon my neighbor Marina and I noticed a HUGE bird flapping around in a tree across the fence. So like any good parent, we abandoned our kids in the back yard and ran around the fence under the tree to investigate. Turns out it was a Great Blue Heron stuck in the tree via a fishing hook stuck in it's head and the fishing wire wrapped around a tree branch. So Marina made a phone call and pretty soon both the city fire department and the CGFD arrived and spent the next 1.5 hours staring at the bird in the tree. After a failed fire truck-bucket rescue attempt and some extension ladder issues, the managed to cut down the entire branch with bird in tow, removed the hook and transported it to some rescue center. Marina got a call later saying the heron will be perfectly fine! So not only are we super awesome summer camp leaders but wild animal rescuers as well. Holla!

Blue Heron rescue.

Stay tuned tomorrow for Day 2 of our little summer camp. Hopefully we won't be rescuing anymore animals in the process.

Sundays

I like Sundays around here. 

There's something kind of special about Sundays here. It seems particularly peaceful, all (well most) of the daddy's have the day off so lots of Coastie families are outside playing with their kids or riding bikes or taking walks and all that cute mushy family stuff. My family was going to go to church together this morning but since certain little boys decided to wake up at 2 and 3 am and then be especially crabby this morning, Daddy went by himself and I stayed home with the crabs. 

So we did some painting. And Calen (who isn't necessarily artistically inclined) painted a Ninja Turtle all by himself and even though to the majority of the population it probably looks like a sad green bloated alien, I was impressed and had some pretty big mommy proudness going on:

It wasn't too hot today so Calen actually got to play with the neighbor girls outside without being in the pool, who knew? After maybe two hours taking turns driving our little 4 wheeler around, we came in for dinner and then went to the big neighborhood playground for the first time in probably three months. It's WAY too hot on most summer days to go to that burning plastic wasteland, but tonight it was just cool enough. And the boys of course were elated. 

And, like many Coastie kids on this street, ended our Sunday by sitting on the street curb watching the recruits run by chanting cadences. Calen asked what they were singing about. How do I explain that they're singing about Chuck Norris kicking their grandma's asses (or something like that)? Yeah. I just told him "recruit stuff."

A How To By Camden

Why is it raining so much this summer?

It even faked us out today. It was sunny, and warm, and as soon as we were ready to go outside and play this afternoon with the neighbors, the sky opened up and it was a seriously blinding downpour of violent rain rage. 

Poop!

Luckily, we're good at improvising around here. I give credit to living in the Pacific Northwest for 26 years prior to here and always having a backup plan when the weather decides to go to shit. 

So, instead of meeting the neighbor girls outside, we brought them to our house for some play, an 80s Ninja Turtle movie, and an awesomely processed dinner (Mac n Cheese and hot dogs, holla!). 

And somewhere in there this weirdness happened. 

 And then we took the weirdness outside for Tball, tire swing fun and Strawberry shortcake. Because it had stopped raining and we could go back to our regularly scheduled program, thank you. 

And Camden taught us how to operate as a superhero in the great outdoors. 

How to play Tball (with the bat backwards)

How to eat strawberry shortcake ON TOP of the table

How to play in the sandbox without getting your cape dirty

How to sneak more strawberry shortcake

How to run away from an angry big brother

 

The Things You Say. And Sharks.

So I just lost two of hours of my life to this movie:

I want to put this movie poster in Calens room. Because obviously!

And tragically it was SO bad that I'm still laughing about it. Kind of like if go into Walmart and see someone that forgot to wear pants. You're embarrassed that you were even a witness to it, but you'll be laughing for the next six years over it.
 
And speaking of half-reality (and sharks). Calen has started storytelling. I'm not sure where it comes from. But somewhere from his head spills out the cutest little outlandish tales. At least to me. Probably because he really hasn't shown much of an imagination until now. 

In the car yesterday:

"Hey Mom. Once, I turned into a rocket ship. And I was going super fast. And then I turned into a man flying a fighter jet and I was going even faster. And then Mom YOU were flying the other fighter jet. And I fell out of the fighter jet and you saved me from the sharks."

Sharks? What sharks? Were you secretly watching this awful movie? But either way, it was cute. 

Day At The Museum

Hey, you'd never know it, but there's something to do in Cape May County other than going to the beach/boardwalk/classic touristy nonsense. 

There's a flight museum!

Okay so by museum I mean a small little air hangar in the middle of the small little local airfield. It really only takes an hour or so to go through, but it's jam packed with a lot of pretty neat planes and helicopters from WWII and Vietnam era (and many used in the actual wars) and 90% of them were open for the kids to sit in the cockpits. 

For a lousy 18 bucks for all four of us to enter, I'd say it was a worthwhile afternoon. 

This actual plane was the MiG 28 in the filming of Top Gun

Get Wet

It rained. Again. Good God, can we get past the rain already? Doesn't God know that it's July on the Jersey Shore and we're supposed to be spending the days at the beach, and not stuck inside the house?

Well today enough was enough, we stuck our middle finger up at the sky and went outside to play anyways. 

Nevermind the fact that it rained almost 2 inches today alone, flash flooding occurred in some local areas (I drove to Walmart later tonight to find the road completely flooded with maybe 8-10 inches of standing water) and that while we were outside it rained harder than I had ever seen in my entire life. 

And I know rain, people. 

But that won't stop us from having a good time. The boys donned their rain gear (though it was raining so hard it didn't keep them even close to dry) and took off running up and down the sidewalk and in the parking lot. 

After maybe 45 minutes we were all completely and utterly soaked (even though I was just standing there, I had to change all my clothes and undergarments. It was raining THAT hard). 

But they at least got to release some of that cabin fever, even if it was running barefoot in the rain (after their boots were completely filled with water and they abandoned them).

And then they went inside and watched NASCAR in their underwear. 

Country boys, the both of them. 

 

Jersey Shore

One (..ONE) good thing about the Jersey Shore...It has the best boardwalks anywhere. 

The beach town nearest to us (Wildwood) has what has been rated as one of the top three piers (attached to the boardwalk) in the U.S, Morey's Pier. 

Morey's Pier is actually three piers right on the beach at the ocean. Huge carnival rides including full sized rollercoasters, AND two full sized beachfront water parks.

Ummm, awesome!

We've never gone even though it's so close. It's expensive, the kids were always too young, and it's expensive. 

However, the CG base sells UBER discounted tickets for one day a year to go to Morey's Pier for an all day event. Access to all piers and the water parks, plus a free catered lunch. A "Coast Guard Day at the Pier" kind of morale thing. The guys don't even have to take leave for it since it's a morale event. And since the kids are finally old enough to appreciate such adventures, we decided to do it this year. 

And it turned out to be quite possibly one of my favorite family events we've ever done. 

Especially the water park. The boys just loved the water park. There were two kiddie areas including one with a shipwreck that had two good sized water slides that the boys were just completely and utterly obsessed with. 

I enjoyed that place so much I might even pay full price one day. But if I can spend an entire day there and only spend $40 instead of $250 AND get a free lunch, then even better.

Flying pirate ship over the water park with the ocean as the backdrop

Acrobatics.

Camden's new thing is doing somersaults off his brother's bed into the bean bag chair. 

The kid is going to be an acrobat.