Creepy desert creatures and the End of Summer

oh wow! summer is over! I wish the 110 degree heat was over too. :/ The kids have enjoyed cooling down in the kiddie pool... it's pretty big for a "little" pool and we discovered there was room to float around on their tubes in it...


We finished up with our final 4 days of Back to School countdown activities. On Thursday evening we went to the Desert Botanical Garden for their flashlight tour. Ben and I agreed that this was really well done and a great experience for the kids. The focus is teaching about the desert at night, so we got to see lots of creepy crawlers, turtles, lizards, snakes, and frogs. The kids loved it! When we first got there, the sun was setting, but it wasn't dark yet - it was beautiful to be in the cactus gardens at that time of day. Once it got dark the kids really loved using their flashlights to light the path - definitely a great night!







Getting a close-up view of the tarantulas and scorpions... ew.

Pitch painting- Native Americans would make ink using pitch (a resin from plants) - the kids got to use it to paint designs to create a necklace.





Searching for bullfrogs

Making spiders






On Friday night we changed up Family Movie Night and created a little drive in movie theme. We had planned on going to the actual drive in theater... but the only kid movie showing there right now is the Smurfs. I really didn't want to see the Smurfs movie and the drive in movies don't even start until 8:30 and we were tired, so we decided to do a drive in movie at home!

The kids each got 8 plastic coins - they needed to use one to buy their movie ticket and then they could use the rest to 'purchase' treats and drinks from the concession stand. They probably loved this part of the activity even more than actually eating the goodies. Becca was the most clever and opted for water over soda so that she'd have more money to buy the most amount of candy. :)

The kids made these cars earlier and for the most part they actually watched the entire movie sitting in those things. It was a fun movie night! And btw, if Emma is in the middle of eating something yummy, she will NOT stop to smile for a picture

On Saturday Ben was working all day and overnight, but I still had back to school shopping I had to get done - most importantly, Emma needed new shoes and a lunch box, plus a couple other clothing items. So, all 4 kidlets and I ventured out on a crazy busy shopping day. And 5 stores and FOUR hours later, I had crossed everything off my shopping list. We were exhausted, but I had promised we would go to the splash park afterwards, and the kids were rather good on our shopping adventure, so I decided I better not renege on my promise. Even though I was crazy tired, it ended up being a really fun ending to our busy day...









Ice cream!

So, on Sunday, the last day before school, we made bubbles and bubble wands



We used up the last of our pipe cleaners (leftover from Becca's ladybug party) to make the bubble wands. The girls liked that they were heart shaped :)


Happy End of Summer!