Bountiful Baskets Day!

I'm late getting here today because it was Bountiful Basket pick up day! Per last week's request from my friend Sabra, here's a picture of my basket this week. There wasn't anything exceptional this week, but hey, I don't have to shop for produce! My basket also included a box of strawberries and an eggplant but my kids inhaled the berries as soon as they came through the door, and I gave the eggplant away. It's one veggie I've done multiple kitchen experiments with and no one has ever said it was yummy. Then I did my grocery shopping for the week. I try to do that right after I pick up my basket because I'm all alone and I love when I can grocery shop with out kids...

I'm still counting Saturday as a "day off", where I don't have real plans beyond the Basics. During the day I'm going to goof around with the kids, and maybe rustle up something yummy for the grill. This weekend I AM making plans for my lazy time, so I don't just get sucked back into slumping over my computer all day like I did last weekend. Today, I think I'd like to practice crocheting a while (I'm trying to learn because Elise wants to learn and my attempts are pretty comical right now...) and maybe catch up on some reading or watch a movie with the spouse. Tonight we're going to be "camping" in the back yard. The girls have wanted to sleep outside all summer and since summer is almost over I decided we'd better seize the day. I'd like to sleep on the grass, but I think Elise is freaked out about sleeping on the ground. She wants to sleep on the deck where it's simple to go inside and crawl into a bed if she wants. We'll go make ourselves comfy out there and at least do some stargazing, even if we don't spend the whole night. Poor Alex is teething and crabby right now, so I'm going to keep him in his own bed, but I'll make sure we find something fun for him today, too.

I also have to share our experience with creating our own games yesterday. We had a blast thinking up fun things to do with a tub full of balls. We practiced batting balls and bouncing them into the tub. We found out that Elise can throw a pool floaty from our walk out basement lawn to the deck above but Madelyn can't quite throw that straight or hard yet. Alex had a ball (get it!!!) gathering the balls and putting them in the tub and then had even more fun throwing them out again. We probably spent an hour just making up funny things to do and when all was said and done we'd had a great time and the kids were all happy and ready for dinner and bedtime. A major bonus: Elise was motivated to go back out and play with the balls again today. She's a pretty indoor type kid, so it was fun to see he just head outside to play. This is definitely one activity we'll be doing again.