Year 2, Day 207: Splasin' Fun!

Well, it took me all summer, but I finally got the kids to a splash pad! That's like a bunch of sprinklers and a dump bucket or two throwing water everywhere so kids and parents can cool off.  But there's no pool or water slides.  They are much easier to install and maintain and you don't need life guards!  Often, they are added in a park that already has a playground in it.  In our case, the playground and splash pad were added last year.  And because we choose to go on the first day that the public school kids were in school (yes, it's still July, but yes, the public schools started today), it was mostly really young kids, most of whom went home for lunch and naps.  We were there from 11:15 to 1:15.  Unfortunately, the one bathroom there was locked because it had been vandalized in the past.  Thankfully, I didn't need to use it for once.  Most our pics are from there, taken by my wonderfully new iPhone SE with a much higher quality camera than the 4s's.  So, I'll talk about more details with those pictures.

We did bring a lunch and had a picnic at the park, too!  That way, when we did come home, Abishai could go right to bed for a nap.  Naptime was highly unproductive for me.  I am having a hard time finding what to focus on next.  Between giving Benaiah jobs to do to making sure Keturah doesn't eat too much before dinner, to separating Keturah and Justin when they fight over the remote, by the time I catch up on email and make a list, it's time to start dinner!  Ugh!

Benaiah was somewhat productive with mowing and digging a hole in the backyard for a pole.  That is, until he hit a pipe several feet down!  Whoops!  Perhaps we should stake our yard first and find out where these kinds of things are.  Thankfully, he was going slow enough that he didn't hurt it.  But now, we'll have to fill in the hole and start over.  Ugh!

And Keturah is keen on packing for vacation - in fact, within an hour of getting a suitcase down for her, she had it packed, including all of her Joanna Grace's new things!  I'm allowing her to bring the doll along because having something like that is like having a friend at hand all the time.  And I've waited a long time for her to be interested in dolls.  And we have a fun project we came up with to do with Joanna Grace while we are on vacation.

Justin is working on building up a penny fidget spinner business, and has already made signs, and a box for "donate pennies here!"  But he didn't realize he needed to research the cost of glue and ball bearings.  Then he has to purchase the materials, make sure they come sooner rather than later and make them.   Yup, learning business lingo as a 12 year old, only because his accounting mama has a business degree she's all too eager to show off, lol.

Abishai successfully enjoyed himself, as always.  And Jared has a full day at work.

Little buddy found the new mini vacuum cleaner.  He loves to clean, just like any toddler!  Then kids turn 7, 8, 9 and chores are a bore!

Abishai took the vacuum through the kitchen, the living room, and the sun room, including having me plug it in each room for him!

It's pretty powerful, but I don't want the kids to use it for the massive amounts of dog hair we have.  It's for quick pick ups only.

What do we do when other kids have to go to school?  We go play in the splash pad!  And yes, after 3 years, I finally wore my bathing suit out in public again!  It's still tight, but I got it on!  And I still love it!  It hides the extra curves pretty well.  Best Value Village (Canada's Goodwill) find ever!  Well, besides my little black dress!

Even before he got wet, Abishai says, "BIG bucket!"

The water will run for 15 minutes are so.  You have to touch a button in the middle of the splash pad to get it started up again.  And the amount of water and pressures change every couple of minutes from sprinkler to sprinkler.

They played in the water for a few minutes, then checked out the very unique playground!  I liked the muted colors and Justin really liked the lime green of course.  Pretty challenging  elements, too.

Music! Lift the key and it hits the xylophone!

Have a bar like structure, will flip!

Abishai wanted to try all the elements, too, especially these!  There were two sets of these, one that wobbled a lot for the big kids and one that didn't move.  Abishai conquered these easily!

Love the big swing, plus two baby swings and two regular swings.  All the seats were very hot though, as well as all the playground elements, so no one slid down the slides.

Very wet!  Abishai didn't want Mommy to get in the water.  In fact, he told me to sit down in my chair!  I guess I haven't been willing to demonstrate that I have fun, too! #momfail

Mom, check this out!  I can put my face straight into the very hard stream of water and live to tell about it!  Ok then!

Keturah is also sitting on one of the sprinklers on purpose.

These two would sit in the perfect sweet spot in order for the dump bucket to hit them just right! 

Abishai also got hit with the water from the bucket, twice, but he didn't enjoy it.  He didn't stay upset for long, but he wasn't ready for it.  One of the times, Keturah and Justin were ready, and Abishai ran in to join them without knowing what was a few seconds away.  So, I had to yell and tell Justin to cover and protect Abishai because he wasn't coming to me.  I'm so glad he did.  Abishai said later, "Wa-wee, back! Owie!"  Live and learn, kid!

Lunch was lots of carbs as usual.  Nothing that would spoil in this 82 degree heat.  Peanut butter crackers, fruit snacks, juice boxes, banana chips, cookies, granola bars.  Momma ate a Larabar and had some fruity water and a juice box.

Abihsai loved having a picnic!

They kept asking for more food but I only brought just enough for this little meal.  They will eat fruits and veggies for snacks later.

Abiahi decided that his peanut butter crackers needed improvement using banana chips.  Actually, I'm sure it tastes great!

Pretty cool climb through!  The bigger slide is behind them and it's pretty hard to get up because the ladder rungs are offset of each other.  But Abishai and I did figure out a pattern to go up them.  He just didn't want to go down the very hot slide.

Fun!  Abishai didn't want to leave and even climbed from the back seat to the front seat naked because I was changing him out of his swimsuit into his diaper! Justin opened the front seat and got a naked boy in his face! Way too funny!

I literally had to tell these two to go to separate rooms because they wouldn't stop wrestling during quiet time.  15 year old and 12 years old and I had to separate them.  Ugh.  Act your age, not your shoe size!  Although, that doesn't quite work when the oldest has a size 10 shoe!

So, I gave Justin the option to go play in the sunroom or go read in the fireside room.  He choose to go play with the choo-choo train like his shoe size (size 4) says he should.  He didn't even notice I took the picture and posted it online!

That line right there that's barely visible?  It's a spider string.  Now, how on earth did a spider get from one side of the sink area too the other side with no other attachments in between?  Bugs, bugs, and more bugs!

Not sure if you can make this out, but the teeanger played the genius/lazy card today.  He dragged out the perfect height indoor folding table and a folding chair out to the "back 40" to dig a 5 ft hole for a pole.  He then proceeded to tell me later how awesome our wifi is out there!  Boy, just dig the hole!  I took the picture not out of anger, but because I saw "meme" written all over it and just had to troll him because it made me laugh so hard I cried for 10 minutes!  You know those articles that say, "10 pictures of people doing crazy things" or "10 best fake tans" or "teens being stupid."?  Yes, I could see something like this on it.  And yes, I read those dumb articles sometimes.  Teens.

He did end up on his belly when he poured water into the hole to loosen up the packed dirt.  When I went out to check on him, he had already found the pipe, and was trying to put dirt back in to soak up some of the water and then take the dirt back out so we could see what the pipe is.  Unfortuantely, we won't make the discovery for a couple of days because it's going going to rain all day tomorrow again.  Time to put that new SUMP PUMP to work!  Yes, my friend corrected me.  It's not a SUB pump but a SUMP pump.  But if it means "submersible" then whey not call it a "sub" pump?  Lol.

Keturah helped Abishai discover a nice little pile of dirt Jared had left to fill in a valley in the yard.  He loved playing in it!  He said, "Pick up! Clean clean!"  But he had fun dumping out the dirt as well.  In fact, he had brought it inside and I told him we could take it with us to Michigan so he had put it near the front door.  But when he heard the back door open again, he ran and grabbed his bucket and shovel and was outside immediately to start digging again!  Then he had his trucks inside "clean up" the pretend invisible mess.

And even Justin joined him later.

Cheap duct tape at Aldi's means a bed transformatin! And a chair, which she should have asked about before she did it because it was a chair from my childhood.  Oh well.

When Justin was doing his chores, he came in all freaked out.  He saw this huge, 3-4 inch wasp on the ground!  It's a cicada killer and has no interest in humans.  It will sting but it doesn't hurt as much as other wasp.  It's wings were also several inches long.  Justin said he heard something that buzzed fall out of the tree and then saw it.  And yes, it's carrying a cicada!

It quickly dragged the cicada across the lawn, up the tree, and then flew into the next yard.  It is still giving me the heebie jeebies!  I'm seeing more (and now bigger) bugs and variety of bugs and wildlife here than I did the first 11 years we were married!  Yikes!  This guy is much bigger than a dragonfly, and it's body is as thick as man's finger.

It's very hard to get out the door to go the splash pad when 4 kids are strewn about the living room in blankets while they wait for mom to pack up and be ready.

Dig, dig, dig.

The hole Benaiah dug.  The water is from the bucket of water he dumped in there to loosen the dirt.  it's NOT from a busted pipe.

I let the middle kids try out the post digger.  Much harder than a pooper scooper, all the action is similar.

She gave it a try, but couldn't lift it up in order to dump the dirt.

And finally, at the end of the day, it's time to play more "choo-choo's."  I think Abishai has officially made the switch from "foo-foo" to "choo-choo."  And he is also saying car and truck instead of their sounds.  He's growing up!  Not so sure Benaiah is when he comes in from working, and plops down next to the very same track to play.  He's 15.  But cute though, that all 4 boys (3 boys and Jared) enjoyed the GeoTrax today.  I'm so glad we decided on it instead of investing in Thomas wooden tracks long ago when Justin was little!