Posts Tagged ‘summer’

A Day at the Lake

Wednesday, August 1st, 2012

day-at-the-lake

Yesterday we spent a day at the lake. It was a gorgeous sunny day, and the kids played in the warm sand and splashed around in the water. Alan took a half day off work, and we just sat on the beach. It was nice to just sit and do nothing.

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The kids made sculptures using the sand, sticks, and seaweed. They dug for water, and then they decided to bury their little brother, who actually wanted to be buried in the sand. He giggled as the sand was built up around him.

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Another one of my sons enjoyed playing with the mud that was made by the wet sand. I wonder if beach sand could work as a mud treatment? If so, I should have had my kids dump mud on me, since I already felt relaxed, as if I were at a spa. Instead, I mostly just watched my kids play, or I lay down on a towel to rest while listening to the sounds of the water lapping on the shore. It was certainly a relaxing day at the lake…

buried-in-the-sand

 

Dollar Movies

Thursday, July 19th, 2012

dollar-movies

The summer is a great time to go to the dollar movies, and yes, they still exist in many cities. The tickets usually cost $3.50 instead of $1, but that’s still good when you have a family of six. The movies have been out of the real theaters by the time you see them at a dollar theater, which is about two months behind.

In Spokane, the dollar movies are at the Garland Theater, which is huge and quite beautiful for an old movie theater. Yes, the floors are sticky, but who is going to complain? Oh, and every summer they show a free movie certain mornings, to help people get out of the heat. (Or to get them hooked on going to that theater so that they can stay in business throughout the year.)

dollar-movie-concession-stand

We’ve watched several movies at this theater over the years, including “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” and “Tangled.” It made us want to build boats out of sandwiches and float lanterns up into the sky. My kids love seeing movies on the big screen.

If you have a zero budget, another way to watch fun movies during the summer with your family is to get some entertaining DVD’s from your library. Not all the videos are educational. Some of them are just for fun, and many are recent releases. Check them out, go home, pop yourself some popcorn, and declare a movie night!

Related article: The Aftermath of a Movie

Tips for Throwing a Fabulous Yard Sale

Tuesday, July 17th, 2012

yard-sale

Here are the top 10 tips for throwing a fabulous yard sale:

  1. The first step in throwing a fabulous yard sale is to de-clutter your entire house. Get rid of everything you can, including any pieces of furniture, putting them into your garage. If people drive by your yard sale and don’t see much, they won’t bother to stop. So if you don’t have enough stuff, ask relatives and friends if they would like to get rid of some stuff. My mother contributed to my yard sale, for example.
  2. The signs need to be clear, written with the thickest marker that exists. Find light-colored construction paper, and use your thick black marker to write “Yard Sale” with an arrow underneath. Do this on 12 large pieces of construction paper, all the same color. When someone is looking for your yard sale and they see the same color on the signs, they know that they are on the right track. Tape the construction paper to the side of a box. You will need 6 boxes, which you can get at Costco or any store that stacks boxes to the side. I forgot to say that your arrows should be 6 to the right, and 6 to the left. When taping the papers to both sides of the box, make sure the arrow points to the same location (opposite arrows).
  3. You will put a brick inside each box to make sure your boxes don’t fly away when you put them on the corners of major streets, leading the cars to your house. You might need more signs depending on how far you are from a big road.
  4. Borrow lots of card tables from neighbors and friends. Label the tables on the bottom to make sure you get them back to the right people. The more tables, the better. No one likes having to crouch down to the ground to see your stuff. You will sell more if the items are on tables.
  5. A free-standing iron bar for hanging clothes is ideal, but I didn’t have one, so I improvised. I hung shirts from a long bush along the side of my driveway. Throw away any clothing with stains, because stained clothing causes people to see your clothes as pieces of garbage, and they won’t buy the good ones either. If everything you display looks nice, people will walk up to it and buy some. I sold lots of clothing for $1 each. Most yard sales can’t sell their clothing because they are heaped up on a table, and who wants to weed through a mound of garbage? Not me. If each garment is hanging individually, people will go up and grab them. Put kids’ clothes together, women’s clothes together, and men’s clothes together.
  6. Several days before the yard sale, put up the card tables in your garage. Divide the stuff into sections. Put toys on one (or two) tables, housewares on another table, sheets and blankets on another table. I was selling a lot of sports equipment this time, so one table had sports stuff. (Unfortunately my driveway is a steep incline, so when people picked up the baseball mitts, an avalanche of balls fell down the driveway, and my customers were alarmed. Then they started laughing and running across the street to see who could grab the most balls before they slammed into the front door of the neighbor’s house across the street.)
  7. Now that you’ve sectioned off the categories on different tables, label the tables with the prices. Paperback books should be 50 cents, hard cover $1. If you charge too much for books, nobody will buy them. DVD’s should be $1; CD’s 50 cents. For my sports table, I put “Balls $1, mitts $4 each.” Toys should be marked individually. I hate those sticker labels that ruin stuff and won’t come off the items. I prefer to write the price with a normal Sharpie marker on white strips of paper, taping them to the item with clear Scotch tape. They always come off without ruining the object.
  8. If you have kids, consider having a bake sale, too. When I’m out yard saling with my mother, I always find it charming to buy a cookie or brownie for 50 cents from a kid. My kids baked the previous day, and we sold out of brownies quickly. My kids felt successful. Banana bread can be sold as a loaf for a higher price, $4.
  9. I don’t pay for newspaper advertising, because I don’t want to be forced to have a yard sale if it’s raining, or if I have no energy that day, or if the kids are barfing or sneezing with snot. Nope. Just put up signs the day you feel like doing it. I made over $200 last Saturday at our yard sale and had a steady stream of people. I only had one piece of furniture. I don’t think I would have had more traffic if I had advertised, and feeling trapped by the date is not a feeling I enjoy.
  10. Only have the sale one day. You make the bulk of the money on the morning of the first day. During the afternoon, you are lucky if you make $20. The whole next day, you are lucky if you make $20. For this reason, I always throw my yard sales from 8am to 1pm on a Saturday. This maximizes your time investment. Take the leftovers to Goodwill immediately after the yard sale. Then sit back and count your money in an air-conditioned house, whooping for joy with your children, who realize that they can now go on a short family vacation.

Swim Lessons

Tuesday, July 10th, 2012

swim-lessons

One of the most crucial skills for a child to learn is how to swim. If a boat overturns or some other accident occurs around water, you want your children to at least be able to get to the surface of the water and tread water so that they can stay alive. I don’t know how many times I’ve had nightmares about my children drowning, especially after my daughter nearly died at age one. I had to empty a large amount of water out of her lungs before she could breathe again.

For this reason I feel that it is important for children to learn how to swim. Swim lessons can be expensive, and if you have young kids ages 2-7, I have some simple activities they can do in the bathtub to be ready for more advanced swim lessons. Once they have done those activities, they can learn to move both legs and arms to stay afloat in a doggie paddle. When they can tread water for a couple of seconds, keep increasing the time as they stay in one place. If they can tread water in place for 60 seconds, they are ready to tread water all the way across the swimming pool. I always provided some form of reward for my child to swim across the pool for the first time, treading water. Children feel proud of their accomplishment when they are able to go the entire length of the pool.

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After they are able to tread water, they are ready for proper swimming. The child can hold on to the side of the pool and kick his feet while not bending his legs. While swimming properly, the child’s feet should never go out of the water, so splashing isn’t supposed to happen. The child can use a floating board to hold on to while going across the pool, focusing only on feet being straight while kicking under the water. Next, the child adds dunking the face in, and breathing to the side while holding the paddle board. The reason you need the paddle board is that the child can’t focus on three things at the same time: the feet, the breathing, and the arms. The child needs to perfect each skill until it comes naturally, so that the child can focus on the next skill.

It helps to have the swim instructor swim right in front of the child while the child watches. The shoulders are supposed to come out of the water, and each stroke should reach as far to the front as possible. After that, the elbow is supposed to bend up, then back. One of my sons kept curving when he swam because his right arm was stronger than his left arm. He needed to try to stroke evenly with each arm to swim straight. Also, keeping the head dipped continuously is hard for some children, but this can be overcome while doing exercises in the bath tub, where the child feels safe.

For more information on easy swim lessons for the bath tub: Bath Time Fun: 49 Ideas for Homeschoolers.