Inveremere Camping Fun

In August we did a big family camping trip to Invermere 

and had a sweet surprise with Jeremy's brother from Hamilton 

and his family doing a last minute trip out West!

One of the highlights of the trip for us was our day trip to Fort Steele, near Cranbrook.  We have visited Fort Steele before, but in March, when nothing is happening, so we were excited to explore the townsite with the hustle and bustle of shops and street actors.  I worked for a couple years in Barkerville as a historical interpreter in the Anglican church and as a shop worker, so to say historical villages are right up my alley is an understatement.  When I was in Junior High my parents planned a trip to the Maritime provinces (Nova Scotia, PEI, Newfoundland and New Brunswick).  For three weeks we traveled in a van, camping, exploring the Maritimes and visiting countless historical sites: Halifax Citadel, Fort Louisbourg, Signal Hill, etc.  It was an amazing trip!

So here are some highlights from camping and our Fort Steele experience:

Blacksmith Shop

School house - the teacher was quite direct and made Aria cry after talking to her about the length of her nails and not sitting facing forward!  Yikes!

Jeremy's scared of the teacher face!

Enjoying the sun and the swings.

Super yummy cookies from the bakery.

No, there isn't an animal in the bag, its ice.  For making ice cream!

Churning the ice cream.

Mmmm, yummy Fort Steele Cinnamon ice cream.

Panning for fool's gold.  There were several free activities in Fort Steele that made it super family friendly, such as panning for fool's gold, making and tasting the ice cream, and all the street performances and tours.

We also did a short hike up Mt Swansea.  We drove up the mountain, and hiked for 15 minutes.  We had met a couple at the bottom and they hiked the entire way up!  I'm glad we drove as we weren't wearing proper hiking footwear!

Camping was lots of fun in our friends' tent trailer that we borrowed.

Roscoe LOVED fishing!  Every night he'd say "I go fishing tomorrow?"  and every morning he'd say "I go fishing now?"  We didn't catch many keepers, but we sure caught a lot of squaw fish!

Love Jar

ARG!!  

My kids are driving me crazy with the constant fighting, biting, kicking, hitting, pinching, tattling... you get the picture.  

Summer is great, because we all get to hang out together and do fun things, but it is also a time of rediscovering sibling (and parental) dynamics!  

My kids haven't spent this much time together in a year, 

since Aria started Kindergarten!  

And now they're together from morning to night.  

So what's a mom supposed to do about it?  

I didn't really sign up to be a peacekeeper this summer!

Last summer on Pinterest I saw lots of ideas about the "I'm Bored" jar, and I thought that's a nice idea, but I don't hear "I'm bored" very often (probably because my kids are too young to be familiar with that concept, thank goodness!).  But it occurred to me that that idea could work as a "discipline" method, or a way of solving the constant bickering!  

So we made a LOVE jar.

Its chalk full of ways to change gears from fighting to loving (and forgiving). 

A lot of the time kids just need to have their focus shifted if they aren't getting along.  So, we made the list together, and each time I hear the "He bit me", "She punched me", etc. they have to pull a slip out of the jar and do what it says.  I tried to keep things simple because my kids are 3 and 6 years old.  As well, I tried to keep the activities to be self-directed (so I can keep doing whatever I'm working on, as the whining usually starts when I'm in the middle of something!), and a good mix of fun ideas, loving ideas, and some discipline ideas... to keep them on their toes!

Here's a list of what we included:

Hug for one minute

Play badminton

Jump through a sprinkler holding hands

Make a waterslide together, and take turns using it

Clean up Roscoe's room

Clean up Aria's room

Brush the dog

Play Ring Around the Rosie

Hug for two minutes

Time out for two minutes

 Give a high five

Sing "Where is Thumbkin"

Sing "Johnny Whoops"
Sing "Old MacDonald Had a Farm"

Dance party for one minute

Say 5 nice things that you like about each other

Pray for each other

 

Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love.

John 13:34

Its an Olympic Summer!

 The Olympics this summer have been providing a great sense of direction for the kids and I over the last two weeks.  Sometimes I get to the middle of the summer, and I think, "Yikes!  What are we going to do now???"  Maybe its the age of my kids this summer, and how much more capable Roscoe is or something, but I've hardly thought that!  We've been going to the beach a lot, and had family visiting, and so much more.  All the same, I love working within a theme, my kids love having a craft to look forward to every couple of days, and the honest truth?  I just need an excuse to start another Pinterest board (check out my Olympics Kid Fun Pinterest board)!!!

 So, last week we did a great painting activity using toilet paper tubes to paint the Olympic rings.  Have to say, pretty low mess, and easy clean up (I threw the tubes away... no washing brushes!).

 As we painted I talked to the kids about how everything always points back to Jesus' love for us: nature, the seasons, the Olympic rings...

BLACK reminds us of our sin, all the bad stuff we do, say or think.

RED is for the incredible LOVE that Jesus has for us, and because he loves us, he died for us, shedding his blood and taking our punishment, 

that we deserve for our sins.  

He loves us that much!

WHITE is for forgiveness.  For saying that we're sorry to God and others for our bad choices, and having our sins cleaned off us, forever!

GREEN is for new life, for the new, fresh start we get to have 

because of being forgiven: freedom!

YELLOW is the hope that we have of spending the rest of our lives 

with our true best friend, Jesus, every day.

BLUE is for telling others about Jesus and his love.  

One way we can do this is through baptism, 

as well as through our kind words, kind hands (actions) and kind thoughts.

 On another day we were watching tennis with the kids, and thanks to my Pinterest board, I had organized several crafts ahead of time for us to do, and pulled out this beauty!

 Little Tennis Puppets!  Aren't they cute?  We used supplies that I had around the house: pompoms, googly eyes, and feathers.  The kids had fun picking out the colours and then I glue-gunned them on to the balls.  

The puppets are great for storing treasure in too!

We've also built different models of boats to test which ones float the best, but were too busy having fun to take pictures!  Here are some of the ideas we used from other blogs:

September Catch-up: A month in Review

I can't believe its been a month since I last posted!  We've had a full month of launching youth and children's ministries at our church, and a month of adjusting to having Aria in all day, every day kindergarten!

We had a really HOT September... probably on account of summer not really starting until August... so we thought up some fun water activities with help from Pinterest, and some other creative moms!

One of our new favorite outdoor toys are these sponge balls!  They are super easy to make and tonnes of fun to play with.  I bought a pack of all-purpose sponges from the dollar store and used some zip-ties that I already had at home.

 

 Its as simple as cutting the sponges into three, alternating colors with another sponge (6 pieces total) and then using the zip-tie to cinch them as tightly as you can together.

 You can use different textures of sponges too to create even cooler looking sponge balls.  We like to use them in lieu of water balloons (way less mess to clean up! And they're re-usable) for water fights or water balloon tosses, or just for playing in the pool!

 We also found a great new friend in our backyard when we were moving some rocks...

 We were moving rocks so that we could set up our fabulous new swing set!  The kids have loved having their own "park" in their backyard.  August was SO crazy hot, I found I was often driving to the park, because it was too far to walk in the heat.  But, next summer, we'll be able to keep cool and have fun swinging in our own backyard in the 30 degree weather!

 Another fun activity we did to beat the heat was to freeze some toys and water in a bucket, and then hammer away to free the toys.

 I gave the kids a couple different kinds of hammers and tools to use so that they could experiment and figure out what kind worked the best.

 Aria preferred Daddy's hammer, while Roscoe liked his plastic hammer from his workshop playset.

 I tried to insist on the kids wearing their sunglasses to protect their eyes...

 But I guess Roscoe thought it made it difficult to see what he was doing.

 My suggestion if you want to try this yourself is to use toys that if broken won't cause upset children!  Some of the tails came off in the ice, and a few lost their feet or paws.  But, it kept the kids happy and entertained for a good 20-30 minutes!

When the Husband's Away, the Mom gets CREATIVE

My husband was away with work last week, so it was me ALONE with my children for three and a half days!  Yikes!  Not only that but it was HOT and we were all a tad bit grumpy... to say the least.

So, I put my thinking cap on to come up with some outdoor activities (inspired by one of my most FAVORITE blogs, Frugal Family Fun Blog) that involved WATER (because my kids decided they were tired of their pool - in 30 degree weather - whatever!) and SHADE to help fill our days and chase the grumpies away!

So, I mixed up a bunch of water in different containers with different food colouring in each container.  Dug out some old infant medicine droppers that I had kept, and away the kids went!  They MIXED and BLENDED and EXPERIMENTED with colours to their hearts content.  And the CLEAN-UP (once the colours had all been mixed to make a lovely murky black-brown colour?) involved dumping the water over the side of the deck onto the grass below!

 

 After the novelty had worn off from mixing colours, onto the next activity!  While the kids were busy, I quickly looked up instructions for folding paper boats, made some sails with toothpicks and construction paper and down to the pool we went for some SAILING races!

 YES!  It even enticed them into the water!

 Next was supper.  Aria wanted spaghetti, and I remembered something that I saw on Pinterest.  

Source: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lao5cpVVlY1qbc1rpo1_500.jpgHotdog Spaghetti via Carmen on Pinterest

I thought it looked disgusting, but I knew the kids would LOVE it, and they would be able to help make it.  All that's required for this child-pleasing recipe is dry spaghetti and hotdogs.

 Simply poke the noodles through the chopped up, uncooked hotdogs (be careful, the noodles do break quite easily).

 BEFORE: kind of looks like porcupines...

 AFTER: looks more like a limp spider or jellyfish!

Needless to say, I made my own spaghetti (sans hotdogs) but the kids really enjoyed making their own supper, and thought it was great fun to eat!