Cousin Camp Day 4

On the 4th and final day of Cousin Camp we didn't have the youngest of my sister-in-law's kids. We decided to go to my other sister-in-law, Lindsay's, community pool. Lindsay's mom also came and helped. Since we had a 2:1 adult to kid ratio, we felt a lot more comfortable than the 3:1 ratio we had most of the time on the other days. All of my nieces and nephew loved it there. My kids...well, they were happy in the kiddy pool. Therefore, that's where I spent most of my time.

All three of my girls did try and get into the big pool. Isabelle put on her floaties and was playing on the steps. I came and stood behind her and tried encouraging her to actually use the floaties and get in the water. She wouldn't so I....well pushed her in. She was literally inches from me and still over the bottom step, so she could stand up. However, she was literally so paralyzed with fear that she could not move a fraction of an inch. She was screaming bloody murder and wouldn't even reach to grab my hand that I offered two inches from her hand. Later on the way home, Isabelle's cousin Abby asked her why she doesn't get in the pool with her floaties and Isabelle answered, "Because I don't trust the floaties." Well, there you go. Ella wouldn't test out the floaties either and had no interest in letting anyone take her out. Surprisingly...shockingly...Emery is the one who was okay with Aunt Lindsay taking her out in the water. Seriously...my scaredy cat was the one who was the bravest. She put her two sisters to shame that day. :)

We ended up leaving the pool because I got a call that we finally had an offer accepted on a house and I had to hurry and write some large checks. And now I honestly can't even remember what we did for the remaining four hours of the day. Watched a movie. Ate lunch. Let the kids play. Relaxed because we were completely burned out. Pretty much. I do remember that the kids fought a lot more and seemed totally done with each other because they had spent so much time together.

Cousin Camp Day 3

On the third day of Cousin Camp, we started off non-theme again. We went to the library for story time and all of the kids picked out one book. Afterwards we headed over to the Meacham Airfield's Vintage Flying Museum. Our theme was "Things That Fly" so my mother-in-law suggested this museum...which no one else seemed to know about. I'm glad she did! When we arrived, the attendant told us that there was not guided tour and to just follow the path through the museum to the hanger and stay on the path around the planes in the hanger. However, a few questions later and the next thing I knew, he was giving us a guided tour. I'm really grateful for it too! He hurried us through the indoor memorabilia area...which was fine because it was mostly war memorabilia that the kids didn't quite understand. There was lots of model airplanes though and they liked looking over those. 

We actually spent quite a bit of time in the hanger looking at the vintage planes. Each had their own war(s) stories and our tour guide was very informed. He wasn't too overly talkative, but he still had a lot to say and I'd guess almost all of it was over the kids' heads. It was all really fun to look at though. 

When I asked the girls individually what their favorite part was, this was all of their answer: pushing buttons and driving the plane. They had a cockpit there for kids to climb up in and pretend to fly an airplane. I'm sure each of them could have spent a good 20+ minutes in there and not been bored. There are so many buttons and things to look at in there. They all loved it!

After the cockpit, the kids took turns sitting on two different bombs. One was bigger than the other and I'm not sure if the differences ended there or not. After the bombs, it was very very useful to have a tour guide. That's when he started pulling the retractable ropes away and started letting the kids off of the path. He let the kids stick their hands up in the holes in the wings that the air goes through to show them that they are there. He also let each and everyone of the kids sit on the wing of one of the larger planes for a picture.

The participants of Cousin Camp (minus Ruger and Clara):

Following this, the kids had the opportunity to actually climb up into a full plane and look around. Emery had a fit because she got scared of the new guy that came to help the kids into the plane since it had a pretty large step down. Amazingly, she actually was okay with our tour guide and even let him help her out of the cockpit after her turn driving, but when she came close to the new guy with the big white mustache, she freaked out. Therefore, there are no pictures of this part of the tour.

Our tour ended shortly after and the kids watched a video of one of the planes we walked around take off. This is where their patience ended and they were just hungry. So, we went to Chick-fil-a for lunch and then headed back to Grandma's house.

Our next activity was blowing up some helium balloons. Of course the kids loved it and had been looking forward to it all week. Once they were all blown up, we let the kids put the left over stickers from the teepee decorating on them.

After the balloons Grandma had to leave with Grandpa to go to Girls Camp too. Aunt Chandler came home and we did a butterfly project. I had drawn an outline of a butter fly and cut out lots of colored squares for the kids to glue on to their butterfly wings to decorate them. For some of these kids, it was their first time gluing and most of them didn't have much experience with it if they did. They did pretty well though.

That summed up our day for the most part. Chandler took the kids outside to play for a little while before Uncle Seth got their to pick up the kids and Aunt Lindsay left. I also ran out with all my kids to meet Curt and our Realtor to look at some houses. We had some other things planned too, but we ran out of time and steam. Mostly the adults just ran out of steam...

Cousin Camp Day 2

Our second day of Cousin Camp was a lot more casual. Our theme was water day. Although, we started the day off totally off theme. We took advantage of a puppet show at the Saginaw Rec Center. It was such a cute show that a ventriloquist put on. The older three really liked it. Ruger slept through it. The other youngest two weren't really old enough to follow it and my twins...well they were more concerned with fighting. I enjoyed it though and I definitely enjoyed the 45 minutes of someone else entertaining the kids. :)

After the show, we went home and did lunch. After lunch we started the real day's water themed activities. We slathered the kids in sunscreen and while we were waiting for the sunscreen to completely dry and soak in, we did a sunscreen experiment. Each of the kids (there was even one more extra kid as my mom brought my nephew Levi over to swim with the kids) had their own piece of black paper and the paper was divided in two. On one side all the kids rubbed sunscreen on it. On the other side, we left it plain. We put all the papers outside while the kids swam. We had to weigh down the papers to keep them from blowing away. After we were done swimming the kids brought their papers in and we showed them how the black had faded everywhere except where the sunscreen was (well, that and where the weights were, but we'll pretend that wasn't a factor). We talked about how sunscreen is important to protect our skin from getting burned by the hot sun. 

After our experiment, we finally let the kids get in the pool. Grandma prepared all three of her pools and the kids loved going from one to the other. Although, naturally, the bounce house got the most use.

After about an hour of swimming, we brought out the water guns. My mom was the awesome one who stood there with the hose and refilled those puppies constantly. The older kids absolutely loved them! Abby and Isabelle took on Levi and Brigham...although Levi seemed to switch teams quite a bit.

After swimming we let the kids watch Finding Nemo and my sister-in-law, Lindsay, took her two little girls home to nap. Emery was the only one that napped at grandma's house though. After she woke up and the movie ended, we went outside and had the kids draw with frozen erupting sidewalk chalk that I made the night before. It was a little hard to get the colors to transfer to the concrete at first cause it was so frozen, but after it thawed out a little, it worked kind of well. They all loved making a big blob of color and having me spray vinegar on it and watching it foam up.

After erupting chalk, they jumped on the trampoline and Uncle Seth showed up to take his kids home for the night. With only having my four kids in the house afterwards, it seemed so quiet! Yay for day two of cousin camp being over!

Cousin Camp Day 1

This last week has been crazy. Crazy crazy! So crazy that as I sit at the end of this week, I'm left wondering how we did it. I am definitely relieved it's over though. 

Two weeks ago today, our family moved in with my in-laws. Yep, that's right...we are no longer in Houston...but that's another blog for another day. Before moving in, my sister-in-law had already asked my mother-in-law to keep her three kids while she went to Girls' Camp. Originally, I didn't think much about it because I could always take my kids and go to visit friends or even stay at my mom's house...but our van is not working and isn't drive-able, so we were at my in-laws for the entire time. So between her three kids and my four (plus two more that came to visit during the day with their mom), we were going to have a full house! 

About a year ago, the same sister-in-law suggested to my mother-in-law that she host a "Cousin Camp" for all the potty trained grandkids. The thought behind it was all the kids old enough would go stay at Grandma and Grandpa's house for three days and just do activities with Grandma and Grandpa and have fun with each other. Since we had access to all of the grandkids, my mother-in-law wanted to do a full blown cousin camp and have everyone come.

She always wanted to do a Indian themed day full of Indian projects, so that was our first day. It was relatively easy coming up with lots of activities and projects. Therefore, our day was totally and completely full. There was maybe a total of two hours total throughout the day that the kids had free time. Those small increments of time inbetween activities were the only times they fought too. So, while we completely wore everyone out, it was totally worth it to keep everyone happy.

After breakfast, we started the day making our Indian head dresses. I had cut all the pieces out already and taped straws to the back of all the feathers so they would stand up. The kids decorated their head band and we taped the feathers on. Then the adults glued the headbands to the right size and the kids loved them. As soon as the head bands were done, we painted the kid's faces with war paint. 

Grandpa pulled out his buffalo hid and told the kids the story of the Nephites and Lamanites and how they became what we now know as Indians. Amazingly, the seven kids all took a group picture and it actually turned out pretty well!

The kids enjoyed jumping around like wild Indians. :)

Grandma bought a dart tossing game for the littlest kids to play while the bigger ones shot their arrows with their bows. We pulled it out early though for all the kids to play with while we were filling some time waiting for the missing two grandkids to come join in on the fun. 

Our next activity was painting. The thought behind this activity was the kids painting a canvas with pictures just like the Indians did for their Teepees. However, when we pulled out the canvas drop cloth, it was a lot smaller than we needed for seven artists. My mother-in-law happened to have some huge cardboard half boxes from new mattresses. We ended up using those instead. It worked out a ton better too because it was sooooo windy out. We still had to put weights on the card board, but the kids really really enjoyed it. 

After painting, even though it wasn't really hot out at all, we let the kids go swimming. They only lasted about an hour because it wasn't hot and it was really windy though. After swimming we had lunch and started to watch Pocahontas, although the kids got restless about 30 minutes in and we never finished it after pausing it there. 

Grandpa came home at lunch to set up a teepee. Once again, the wind really interfered with this task. We did get it up, but it didn't last long...and not long enough for me to get a picture of it because Ruger woke up from his nap. The kids did like sitting inside to get away from the wind though! 

Once Grandpa went back to work, Aunt Chandler came home during her lunch to help with the kid to adult ratio as we made necklaces. The kids actually did really well with it. They were much more coordinated than we thought they would be. This activity went over really well with all of the kids.

Once of the most looked forward to projects of the day was decorating their own teepees. I had made all the teepees the night before because it involved hot glue and patience...and these kids do not have any patience. The kids all decorated their teepees with stickers and once again, they all seemed to love it.

We had a little break between the teepees and our next activity, but not too long. We made corn, since it's an Indian's favorite food. :) My mother-in-law has a stack of packing bubble wrap that on the flat side it is sticky. Each of the kids stuck the bubble wrap to their hands and I went around and painted the bubbles. Then they used the bubble wrap as a stamp to make the kernels of corn. Once again, the kids did really well with this craft. They had to be a bit more patient as I didn't let them paint their own bubble wrap, which was hard, but it all worked out. The corn looks more like a corn/pineapple mix, but yeah, not everything was perfect.

We finished our day off with some of the more dangerous activities since Grandpa, Uncle Luke and Dan and Daddy showed up to help. The kids roasted their own hot dogs. Some lasted more than others. Uncle Luke and Grandma really ended up cooking most of them.

After dinner we did bows and arrows. We did two rounds and Emery and Ella each took one turn. Isabelle loves to shoot her arrows and is always eager to get a chance. It was super nice to have one male adult to each kid shooting.

After bows and arrows, it was bed time. Yay!

It was a super super full day. It was hard and emotional (seriously...kids can be mean...) but the kids had a blast and it was a great experience for them. It was definitely the longest and most packed day of our four days together.