Summer Bucket List, Week 7

We have a Summer Bucket List, thanks to Kelly over at Little Wonders' Days.  This is simply a list of fun things we want to do or accomplish this summer.  We just completed our seventh full week of summer.  To review our previous weeks go here, here, here, here, here and here.  Seems like this was kind of a slow week.  


1.  Visit 10 parks to play and picnic:  We planned to go with the Clarke County Moms to play and picnic on Tuesday.  However just as we were ready to leave home, it started raining.  We stayed home, much to the dismay of the boys, and finished working on stuff for farmers' market that afternoon.  We did go Wednesday to the county park in Hopeville.  I think it is fascinating that a century ago Hopeville competed with Osceola for the county seat.  It was a hopping town, and has a cemetery to prove it.  Unfortunately the town died as the railroad and highways passed through Osceola rather than Hopeville.  Now there are still a few roads set up in a grid, a handful of house, a little church, and the park, oh and the cemetery (we drove through and most of the stones listed birthdates of the mid 1800s and deaths from a hundred years ago, fascinating).  Each September Hopeville hosts a music reunion the brings in quite a crowd.  Anyway... the park was small and older, but the boys and I set up an obstacle course through the equipment and that entertained them for almost an hour.


11.  Camping:  This one we had already accomplished, but I think Colby and Ron's trip to Cub Scout camp is worth mentioning.  They were to spend two nights at Camp Mitigwa with the den that Colby is in and the den just older than his from our pack.  The day they arrived Colby made a necklace with a disk wood from a tree branch.  That night Colby volunteered to say grace at supper for the group.  The boys walloped their parents in a sponge war.  They slept in tents and were awoken bright and early the next morning.  They swam, made a wooden box with tools, shot BB guns and cross bows, and threw rocks at targets.  The group from here decided to return that night since rain and possible thunderstorms were moving in and they were sleeping in tents on the ground.  It was a great experience for them both.


12.  Library Activities:  Again, already accomplished, but worth mentioning again.  This week a gal from Blank Park Zoo brought five animals to visit us, including a baby alligator.  Braedon learned the word domesticated.  And the older two boys won prizes for reading books, while Brody turned in another list of books to receive a free book.  This was the last week of summer story hour, and we will miss it.


16.  Make Homemade Popsicles:  Yep, another repeat, but I wanted to report that the lemonade popsicles were a hit and the boys are interested in making their own with apple juice or koolaid.


45.  Play 'Get Lost in the Country':  Okay, let me explain this game.  My friend Paula's in-laws used to play this and she has continued the tradition with her kids.  I thought it sounded fun and have played it a few time with my kids.  However they get a little nervous that we will really get lost.  We played this on our way back from Hopeville.  It works like this:  Start driving in the country; at each intersection a child gets to choose whether to turn left, right, or continue forward; continue, taking turns choosing the direction of travel until you arrive somewhere you recognize or, in our case, mom decides you have wasted enough gas for the day.  We actually took the long way to Murray.  The boys were not as nervous about getting lost this time, and were trying to make it to Creston (the next county over).


Other things we did that were not on the original list:
*Swam in Grandma Onn's pool.
*Friday I got to spend much of the day one on one with Braedon.  He will be ten next month and I know the tough teen years are coming.  Today he had a doctor appointment in Des Moines and my in-laws offered to take the other boys.  So after the ten minutes at the doctors office, we browsed the shelves at Half Price Books and checked out books, toys, cameras, candy, and the dollar bins at two Targets.  We only bought one sack of candy (Braedon) and one book (me), but it was fun hanging out with him.  After we got back to town and delivered some goodies to a friend's house, we took some laminating over to my school.  He played with the Marbleworks (he's quite talented with it) while I began putting up a bulletin board and put away a box of paints.


What do we have going on next week?  Well, we have an overnight family camping trip tomorrow, one of the hottest days of the year, with the cub scout pack.  And then we have an activity-filled week planned, including a trip to our county fair.  I have been looking at the list and thinking I'd better get busy with some of these items...  I have worked on prepping some of them, but we'd better get to it, huh?  Hope you are having a great weekend and stay cool.