We are not a family with tremendous schedule obligations. The kids don't play organized sports or take music lessons (although I would like to start that, I'm meeting with resistance) or do dance, so apart from scouts once a week, our afternoons are fairly open. The kids come home from school, have a snack, watch some TV, play with friends, and do some homework. It's all fairly casual. It allows us to be spontaneous, to have last minute play dates, and to let the kids be kids.
That being said, however, I decided this year to institute a new activity each week on Friday afternoons. Fridays are our early-out day, school is done at 1:30, and so we are now going to have what I'm calling "Field Trip Friday." Each Friday afternoon, I'm going to take the kids to do something out of the ordinary. Rather than come home and spend the long afternoon arguing or watching TV, we're going on a field trip. I figure I can come up with a fun something to do once a week, and it will be a nice way to celebrate the end of another week at school.
For the first Friday of school, we went to swim at the rec center. It was the last week the outdoor pool was open, and we had only been swimming there once this summer (bad planning or something on my part). We didn't take anyone, we just went the three of us, but we went down the slides--indoor and outdoor--lots of times, we jumped off the high platform, we practiced front crawl, and we went around and around and around and around the lazy river. It was hot and sunny but not too crowded. We didn't have to wait long for any of the slides, and I didn't feel like we were sharing the pool with gobs of people. It was a great way to finish up our summer and to begin a fun new tradition.
I took no pictures of that first field trip Friday because I was swimming.
Week two's activity was Kent's summer family work party. This is the second year we've done it, and as with last year, we met at Dal's house in Midway. There was a large bounce house for the kids, as well as dunk tank, volleyball, snow cones, and marshmallow roasting. We had a delicious Hawaiian dinner prepared by Lose and her husband, and lots of time to visit and watch the children run around.
Brandt and Blythe were enchanted with the dunk tank. While the idea of actually getting dunked did not appeal to them at all, being in the tank was great, even though the water was straight out of the hose cold. They pretended it was a jail and climbed in and out. I got no pictures of the dunk tank being used for its intended purpose, but Jeff Koebrick was a good sport and sat on the platform. He was dunked about five times. We went home only after the sun went down and it was growing dark and cool. We are grateful for the good people Kent works with and for the camaraderie we enjoy with them.
I took far fewer pictures this year than last.
Oh well.
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