Safari Today, Tomato Thieves, Library Crafts, and Bass Pro

So, this is my first post that is actually written on the day it says it is. I would have written this sooner…actually it probably would have been more then one post…but I was busy transfering all my other posts over and that took me quite a while.

Some Saturdays when I work I will leave the boys with some activites to do and on this particular Saturday the activity was Safari Today. Connor receives shipments of animal cards in the mail about ever month or so. He gets twelve new cards in each shipment. For this last shipment that he received instead of giving them to him when I got the mail I decided to hold on to them and make the boys a safari. After the boys were asleep I put the cards in various spots around the house. I also put hats (one was the safari hat I made for Connor’s Buzz costume and the other was a Pluto hat…it was all I could find) on a table along with some questions to answer and binoculars (toilet paper rolls) for them to make.

I also write them a message about the activity and tape it to their door and this particular one read none other then “Safari Today!” and it also had instructions. I was hoping they wouldn’t start right away but of course they went straight to work on making their binoculars as soon as they saw everything and were off on their safari before I left for work.

JT’s tomatoes are doing really well BUT we have had some problems. There seems to be a tomato theif. One evening when we went out to water one of the tomato plants was gone. It was torn in half and only the bottom stem was left. There was no trace of the rest of the plant anywhere except for a lone green tomato lying on the grass. It looked like maybe a bite had been taken out of the tomato or it had been pecked at or something…it actually looked weird. Maybe I should have taken a picture of it but there were two holes and then in between the holes it looked like it had been stitched up…very strange. Then on Friday JT and I noticed that two of his tomatoes were about to be ready but they need maybe another day or two so on Sunday I went out to pick the two tomatoes and one of them was gone. I checked the plant though and it was perfectly fine and I could see the part of the vine where the missing tomato used to be and it was as if the tomato had been picked perfectly off the vine.

Now that Connor is off for the summer it is time to start keeping them entertained. One of the places we do this is at the library. We usually go when they have a come and go craft time. Last week it was a turtle craft. First they had them draw an oval and cut it out for the body and then they gave them precut flippers, heads, and feet. Once they glued it all together they painted them using dot paints and bubblewrap. Then they glued waves on a sheet of paper and put their turtle on top. They came out cute.

This week’s crafts were Father’s Day crafts. I didn’t take pictures but they were really cute and I was very impressed with JT’s writing. He wanted to write on his by himself so I told him the letters and he wrote them. If he didn’t know how I just instructed him and he did a great job. Perhaps I will take pictures of them later.

One other place we go to for activities during the summer is Bass Pro Shop. They have a family summer camp and they have free workshops and crafts. This weekend was the start of it and I thnk it will continue for about 6 weeks or so. It is on Saturdays, Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. So, we went yesterday (actually it’s now after midnight so we went Tuesday) and we started at one of the workshops, it was the fishing workshop. All the kids are able to get lanyards and for each workshop they complete they get a pin that they can pin on their lanyard.

AFter the fishing workshop we went upstairs to the craft area. The craft for this week is a compass. They each got a little kit that contained a paper compass, a small real compass, and a piece of string (not string but I can’t seem to think of what it’s called at the moment so I’m saying string). They colored the paper one and then stuck the real one in the middle and put it on the string so they can wear it around their neck.

Well, that is all I have to say for today but the Abilene CALF starts tomorrow and I hope to at least attempt to blog about it while I’m there.