Unstructured Play

I feel really old saying the over-used cliche' but things are different from when I was a kid. I remember my mom or dad saying go outside and play, it's nice out, you need to be outside enjoying the summer. You know what, I needed to be outside, and I found things to do, every kid did. I was an only child but my cousin was often at my house so we played together or I played with the neighbor girl. She was a little younger than me but she was the only kid around that was even close to my age, so we played; we rode bikes, swam, made our own version of the Olympic hurdles, basically we found fun things to do. It wasn't structured.

Now my child has play-dates scheduled in advance, which I am not knocking down, but it's scheduled and coordinated. Kids don't drop by and play, I mean I'm sure you remember knocking on the neighbors door to ask if she can come outside and play, or vice versa. I sure do. Why doesn't that happen in my neighborhood?! We live in a nice, family-friendly place that would be an ideal area for this to happen.

I do have to say we have dropped by one neighbor's house when we were out for a walk one evening but in general, this doesn't go on, at least not at my house. There are at least four other kids that I know of that live close that he could play with but we never see them outside.

Do you experience the same thing or do neighborhood kids still just play together? I found these cute door hangers on Pinterest that linked to Melancholy Smile's blog and I desperately want to be able to use these.

Summer Camp

When I was a child I didn't go away to summer camp and I have a vague recollection of attending a night or two of bible school and absolutely hating it. I did however go to a couple basketball camps when I got older but that was basketball.

I had heard several moms earlier this year talk about their kids doing this camp and that camp too. The church we attend holds a vacation bible school but children have to be in Kindergarten, so that was out for us. Actually, I didn't plan to do a camp at all, I figured it's summer so my five year old will play outside all day, play with neighborhood kids, finish out his baseball season, and play a couple soccer games.

After the short baseball and soccer seasons we were spending a lot of time just hanging out at our house and outside. I say we as in my five year-old, the new baby, mommy, and sometimes daddy. The neighborhood kids that I thought would be outside playing and all of the kids getting together didn't happen. So I started to look into a small day camp because with the new baby I couldn't always be the playmate and he needed to be with kids his own age.

I started to look in August and because that is considered pretty late in the summer for camp, I missed a lot of them and the camps I found were late in the evenings. Late evenings aren't good for our family, we are winding down not up. Plus bedtime around here is about 8 p.m. because when kids are up by 6:30 a.m. it makes for a long day if they stay up late.

As we were driving to an appointment one morning I saw a sign for an arts and drama camp, and after looking into it a little further, I signed our son up. Today was the second day and he is having a great time. They have the kids separated by age (5 & 6 years of age together) and then into four rotating classes of art, drama, voice, and instruments/music. They also provide the kids with a morning snack and lunch; their day runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Although our little guy doesn't share any specific information I have received a high level overview of what he's doing in each class and he's having fun so I'm happy. The instructors/volunteers have put a lot of thought into the extra kid-friendly things, like making a ham and turkey kabob with flower cheese cut-outs and bread pieces in shapes. They hold a program at the end of the week for family and friends to showcase what the kids did all week. I'm looking forward to the program and our son is looking forward to tomorrow.

Fun at Nana & Pappy's

Today I drove to pick our son up from his Nana and Pappy's, well actually we decided to meet at my son's great-great grandma's. Yes we have five generations on my side of the family and with the exception of my kids, the rest of us are about 20 years apart. I had my children at 24 and 29 so I broke the tradition. 

Anyway, we don't live extremely close to our family so if my son stays with my mom, like this time, my dad, or my husband's parents he usually stays two nights because it's too much of a drive to only stay one night. He is not always crazy about the two nights but if he's busy he forgets about not being able to sleep in his own bed. As you can see from the pictures, they kept him extremely busy and I'm sure tonight they are exhausted too. 

Dirt Bike, Peddling the Fire Truck,
Temp Tattoos & Side by Side

I don't even have the majority of the pictures my mom took, she's really good at remembering to take photos, especially compared to me who usually doesn't ever remember. I'm trying to get better about this but I was never one to scrapbook or put photo albums together for others. 

I was so thrilled he had such a good time and lately because my son and I have a lot of the same qualities, we were butting heads and challenging each other so we needed a small break to catch our breaths. I teased him and told him that daddy, the baby and I didn't have nearly as much fun as he did or do anything as cool. So he felt especially special! And any parent knows that is a fabulous feeling. 

Primanti Bros. Kid

How many of you don't know what Primanti Bros. is? Well if you live near Pittsburgh, then you probably grew up knowing exactly what they serve and what to order - I grew up about two hours from Pittsburgh and knew at a very young age about a Primanti's sandwich. For those of you that might not know, it's an awesome place with the original restaurant in the Pittsburgh Strip District, being most famous for putting coleslaw and french fries on the sandwich. 

The restaurant was featured on the Travel Channel's Man vs. Food - when the reason for putting everything on the sandwich was given - truckers that were traveling needed a quick way to eat and only use one hand to do it while driving.

Anyway, I'm not sure I know of anyone that doesn't love this place and if you've ever been to Heinz Field or PNC Park to have a sandwich, well please go to the restaurant - it's a whole different experience and in my opinion so much better. My husband and I have been to the restaurants several times and he always gets one if we go to any Pittsburgh game but at this most recent outing the whole family went. We went to the Primanti's in the South Hills because we were in the area for my son's doctor appointment...so my son decided he wanted pizza, they have a large menu at this location. Well..."it is the best pizza I've ever had." He was crazy about it and pizza is probably his favorite food (besides chocolate) so he has a lot of comparison. He talked about how great it was through our entire lunch. 

When we were leaving he asked his dad why we don't go to that restaurant more often, his dad and I explained it's really not close our home and we actually don't go out to eat a lot because it's sometimes difficult to take kids out to eat. Anyway, he had the perfect solution - "let's move closer to the restaurant, daddy you can just drive further to work and then we can go there for pizza all the time." I tried my hardest not to laugh out loud but it was so cute because he hated the process of moving when we did it in February but he would completely go through it all again to live closer to Primati's. 

If you haven't tried it, please do and let me know if you love it as much as we do. 

Momma's Little Gardener

After canning the peppers, my son and I decided we would try to freeze some of the green beans from the garden. He was not very interested in helping me pick the beans off the plants, mainly due to the fact he didn't want to search for the largest ones. We do have a couple really little beans in the mix but now there is a variety.

When I picked all that I thought could and came inside the little guy stood on a chair at the counter and helped me snap off the ends to get them ready to boil.

While he was busy snapping I got the large pot of water boiling. We placed all of the beans in the boiling water for about four minutes and while we were waiting those quick couple of minutes my son got the ice bath ready.

When we both started to smell the green beans we immediately cooled them in the ice water. This was my son's favorite part, mixing and dunking the beans in the ice. After they thoroughly cooled we placed them into the freezer bags.

This is such an easy process and perfect for a five year-old because other than the boiling water, he can help with everything. An additional bonus was that when his dad came home from work, he was able to go through the step by step process and tell what he did to help.