I have decided that the hardest thing about summer is trying to keep the kids off of the electronic devices.  I get them off the TV and suddenly I realize they are all on an ipad or computer.  Then I get them off of those and the next thing I know, everyone is in the basement playing video games or playing on a phone.  Finally I just put an end to it all and said whatever they are doing has to not require electricity.  It seems to be a good guideline, so whenever I say "no electricity" everyone knows what that means.  That seems to free up our time to get chores done (we actually got the whole house clean at one point and we have gotten a lot of weeds out of our yard as well).  We've also had lots of fun too so I will be posting some of the things we have found to do that don't require electricity.  :-)

The first idea was a lemonade stand.  I think Skylar and Adam actually did this the very first day school got out.

A few days later Adam was wandering around saying how bored he was, so he put together some lego boats and he and Rebecca tested them out in the hot tub.  They actually floated, at least for a little while.  For some reason the boats didn't make it into my picture.

Rebecca has discovered Pinterest and has a whole list of fun crafts and activities to do this summer.  Here is the first one we tried:

This one actually did require electricity because we used the heat lamp over the stove to melt the crayons.  It was really fascinating to watch as it melted and ran down.

Stay tuned for some of our other activities and adventures.