06/10/2013

First full day of summer vacation.
It went pretty well, I think.
The deal I made with the boys is that if they finish their chores/practicing/schoolwork (we're doing just an hour's worth each day) by 12:00, they can have 1 hour of entertainment screen time and up to an hour of non-entertainment screen time (writing stories, designing buildings on Home Designer, composing music on MixCraft).  They were able to finish mostly by noon, with not too much whining.  Now I need to set up controls on the computers so that they can only stay on for an hour at a time.
We went swimming in the afternoon, and I got sunburned!  It's the first time I've gotten sunburned in more than 5 years.  I normally can't stay out in the sun long enough to burn.  We have 3 pool floats that the boys decided were ships.  I was on the U.S.S. Lazybones and the boys basically pushed and pulled me around the pool in the game they were playing.  It was so great lying there in the cool water, looking up at the trees and the blue sky.  But I got sunburned.
The boys are pretty creative in the pool.  The strung a long rope from the diving board to the railing by the step, using it as a barge line and barrier and whatever else they need it to be for their games.  And they rigged up a big bucket that they filled up with bricks and rocks and tied with a rope to the diving board.  One kid stands up on the diving board with the bucket, and another child is down in the water hanging onto the rope attached to the bucket.  Then the kid on the diving board drops the bucket of bricks down into the water, and it sinks "like a rock" to the bottom of the pool, dragging the kid hanging onto the rope along with it.  Apparently this is very fun for the boys, and they took turns sinking to the bottom over and over again.
I am loving the pool so far this summer!