The End of Summer

Well, before we went back to school, here were a few things we did to celebrate the end of summer...

1. A little back-to-school countdown.

Usually I do the Back-to-School Fairy, but this year the fairy wasn't feeling it.  Plus, I thought KL's idea of a little scavenger hunt each day to count down to the start of school would work better.  This way they'd get a little something that was school-related each day, instead of just a basket full of goodies the morning of the first day of school...which is hectic enough already!  It was funny because I thought Elina never even gave the BTS Fairy a second thought.  But when I mentioned switching to a scavenger hunt, she said, "But the BTS Fairy is still gonna come, right?" I kinda looked at her in shock and said, "You want her to come?" She replied, "Yeah, she comes ever year, Mommy.  She gives us a basket of school stuff.  You're NOT the BTS Fairy, right?"  I'm not going to burst those bubbles yet, so the next day I told her that I discussed it over with the BTS Fairy and she said the scavenger hunt would work better for our family since we are not early risers.  I told her the BTS Fairy gave me everything that was going to be in the basket and I just had to spread it out over the next few days until the first day of school.  Elina agreed that we are not early risers, so she said it was a good plan.  Phew!  Bullet dodged.

2. We had an End-of-Summer Ice Cream Tasting Party.  I have been DYING to do this for a long time and this was the perfect opp to do it.  J and I bought 12 pints of ice cream that sounded yummy and then AM and her family came over for the party.  

We scooped a spoonful of a flavor into everyone's bowl without revealing the name of the flavor.  Everyone tasted and wrote down what they thought about the flavor.  For the kids, they just drew a smiley face, a neutral face, or a sad face.  It was so much fun to taste all the different flavors!

Even Eulee got in on the action!

Some of them were so yummy and some of them were plain disgusting!  I couldn't believe it.  After we finished the tastings, the adults hung around to discuss the flavors...the highs, the lows, the joy, the tears.  We went through each one by one...discussing what we thought and then revealing the name of the flavor.  This part was so much fun!  Well, the adults thought it was fun...the kids had already run off and started playing.  They didn't care what the flavors were...they just cared about scooping all this ice cream into their little mouths.  Ha!  Some of our faves were Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Therapy and BJ's Pistachio Pistachio.  Some of the low points were BJ's Peach Cobbler, BJ's Red Velvet Cake (we had such high hope for this one since red velvet cake is B's fave!!...what a disappointment!), and Haagen Dazs' Vanilla Swiss Almond.  Of course we ended the night by playing a few rounds of Banangrams.  What a great party!  New annual tradition!!

3. We had a Back-to-School tea party.  The kids and I made our own lemonade (on our summer bucket list) and I made an apple cider bundt cake.  Then we made our table all fancy-like and invited the neighbor kids over for our tea party.  I made a rule that we all had to speak with a fancy accent, too.  It was quite smashing!  The kids got a kick out of all the accents and the cake and lemonade were delish!  We even threw pop rocks into the lemonade to make our drinks "talk."  We had a great ol' time!  But I don't know about squeezing that many lemons again.  =)

Right before school let out, we made our summer bucket list.  There was no way we were going to finish everything, but it was fun completing a lot of it.  Here were some of the highlights--

*Go to Krispy Kreme for breakfast in PJs.  It was pretty fun for them to go out in public in jammies....and pretty awesome for me that I didn't need to ask them to get dressed.  Ha!  

*Sleep in a tent in the bonus room and tell spooky stories.  Tent...check.  Spooky stories...check.  Sleep...I don't think so!  When we were all ready to sleep, I turned out the light and we all laid there.  The kids shuffled around in their sleeping bags...and they KEPT shuffling around.  After 10 minutes of listening to this, I kindly asked them to stop moving around so much.  We laid there...and the shuffling started again...and continued on and on.  Seriously, it's like a special kind of torture to listen to that constant shuffling. After another 10 minutes, I said, "Maybe we should just sleep in our own beds?"  Without missing a beat, Elina replied, "Good. That's what I was going to say because I just can't sleep like this."  I was floored!  And they went about packing all their things and going to their bedrooms.  What's even funnier is that Eli climbed into bed and happily said, "Ahhhhh...my bed!" as if we had been gone for weeks!  What??? I think it's because on normal camping trips, you are up all day doing active things and staying up late at night...so by the time you get into your tent, you pass right out.  That was not the case on this day.  The kids appreciated the effort I made, but in the end they would rather crawl back into their own warm beds.  Too funny!


*Play with water balloons.

*Plant seeds.

*Go to a water park.

*Go to the beach.

We did a lot more, but not everything was documented...and not everything was a big deal.  Some of them were just little things that the kids wanted to do. That's what I love about summers...all the time to do the little things.  It was definitely a fun summer, but I wish it were longer!