Giant Ice Cubes

My boys like to destroy things. It's in their DNA. I saw this idea on a couple of different blogs. You get a container (any shape and size) and you put little plastic toys in it and then fill it up with water and freeze it. It's probably better to freeze layer by layer of toys, but I just did it all at once. I took little green army men, some change (for their piggy banks) and a spiderman and froze them in some water. You have to think ahead a bit on this and fix it up the night before. I gave the boys squirt guns (we have ice cream cone squirt guns from their Easter baskets in case you were wondering what those plastic ice cream cones were) and hammers. The squirt guns were kind of a bust after the hammers came out. :) I've also seen where you can give the kids salt and let them spoon it onto the ice to melt it.

They thought it was totally fun and it kept them entertained for about 15 minutes before they had every last little piece of ice smashed.

Train Day

First of all, I've been gone way too long from this blog, and I can't promise that it will be regular postings for a while, but I am glad to be back! We've had a baby since I posted last and it is a GIRL!!! This fun little book arrived in the mail today. How sweet! Natalya Joy is her name. You will probably be seeing pictures of her very soon on here.

We've just been enjoying playing outside this summer and trying to adjust to 3 kiddos. Today, however, was so hot that we had to come inside to play after only being out an hour in the morning. I decided that it would be easier if we came up with a theme so we could think of things to do with that theme. Trains it was! So I pulled apart this cardboard box and let the boys paint it so we could eventually put it back together and make a train engine. It didn't turn out so well so I don't have a finished picture, but I'm pretty sure they were more interested in painting anyway.

We moved on to a little train set we have upstairs. You'll have to forgive the near nakedness. It's hot and Titus is potty training. And who am I kidding? This is the usual attire around here (for them!)

Then we went downstairs to play with their Thomas train set.

We have a Thomas the Train Memory Game that we played...

Except Titus doesn't know how to play Memory yet and Roman could really have cared less, so this is what ended up happening.

We got out their Thomas tent and tunnel. :) I know...it's a stretch.

Boys...do they destroy EVERYTHING?

I kept telling the boys that there was a surprise at the end of the day (usually to bribe them to be good!). One time when we were picking up the Memory game cards Roman asked "is this the surprise?" :) Boy was he relieved when I told him it wasn't. I'd be some kind of mom if THAT had been my surprise. We went and picked up daddy from work and drove to the zoo to ride the train right before closing. They loved it!