Summer Bucket List, Week 9

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 ninth full week of summer.  


Our previous weeks can be found here: 
week one, week two, week three, 
week four, week five, week six,
week seven, and week eight.  


Can you believe Monday is the first day of August?  That means I head back to work full time in a couple of weeks.  The two older boys start back to school August 22 and my baby starts preschool a week later.  Summer is coming to a close before we know it and we still have items to check off the bucket list.  Let's see what we did this week...


1.  Visit 10 parks to play and picnic:  It's been a long time since we had rain, so we went to Warren park.  It often floods, but not this week.  We took the easy route and picked up some Lunchables and chips from the grocery store.  Brody got brave and walked across the monkey bar bridge, with my help.  


4.  Swimming at the Pool:  Ron took the boys to the public pool after Tuesday's Farmers' Market.  I have enrolled the older two in swimming lessons starting next week and they are nervous about not remembering some of the skills they learned last year.  So they went to the pool to cool off and to practice.  I think they are more comfortable now.  All three went down the water slide--Braedon on his own, Colby on his own (for the first time) with Ron catching him at the bottom, and Brody with Ron (for the first time).


31.  Eat Chinese:  The boys and I made a trip to the local Chinese Restaurant after Farmers' Market today.  They were quite brave and readily tried lots of new foods.  They all found something they liked, something they didn't care for, and got full.  We visited with their friends Howie and David (the sons of the owners) and actually got a compliment from another family about how cute they were.  The family had just been at the market an hour earlier too.


48.  Look for pictures in the clouds:  We found a rabbit in the clouds this week.  We really have not had very good picture clouds lately.  We'll keep working on this one.


Things that we did that were not on the original list:
*Thursday evening we enjoyed music, food, and kiddie carnival games at Thursday Night at the Park.  Braedon and Ron stayed home, but the younger two boys and I enjoyed ourselves.  They tossed rings and beanbags, got tattoos and balloons, ate 25 cent popcorn and snowcones.  This was followed by an outdoor movie on the square.  We watched Toy Story.  The weather was perfect.  The movie was familiar, but we hadn't watched the first one for awhile, so it was kind of new too.  It was a lot of fun!
*Our Friday Fun Tour took us to 'behind the scenes' at our local HyVee Grocery Store.  The kids enjoyed seeing all the huge refrigerators and freezers and the oven big enough to wheel two carts of baked goods inside.  They also got a sucker and two cookies each.
*We picked up lunch and a movie and played with the toys at my preschool while I got a few things done.  It cracked me up watching the kids enjoy Beatlejuice.  Braedon can't believe they are still selling movies made in the late 80s.  :)
*Ron and the older boys just took an impromptu bike ride with the neighbors.  


This week we have swimming lessons and VBS.  Tomorrow we are going to see the hot air balloons with family in Indianola.  We'll have to see what else we can squeeze in.  What are you doing to make the best of the rest of your summer?