Pedigreed Housewife World

School is out for the summer and to kick off the fun, I decide spend time encouraging the kids to use their imaginations a bit.   The kids, however, have their own plans for the first day of summer.   Abby dons her new dress (for the second day in a row) and Briana decides that she wants to spend the whole day in pajamas (a huge surprise for a morning outfit from my little fashionista).   Regardless of outfit choice, both agree that they want to spend the first day of summer vacation “doing science experiments”. Not to worry.   We’re not at an impasse.   I have been saving our crystal making supplies for just such a merger between imagination and science (or for a rainy day, whichever came first). The kids are ecstatic and can’t wait to start! I tell them that we are going to make magic crystals.   I even say “magic” with a mystical sounding, wavy voice to emphasize how cool it was.   My practical kids were not fooled, but just wa...

Our family loves to roadtrip.   As we get ready for the end of school, we have started talking to the kids about where we are headed this summer and Briana has become fascinated with tracing out the many possible paths we could take on her US states coloring placemat.   Pretty much regardless of where we are mapping, she likes to see if she can make us go north through Michigan so that she and Abigail can laugh uproariously about us having to turn our car into a boat to get across Lake Michigan.   Hey, if Rocket can do it, why can’t we (Little Einstein’s tv show reference for anyone reading without little ones who watch that show)? While the kids trace out possible routes with their fingers, we talk about whether we are going north, south, east, or west to reinforce that vocabulary.   In addition to reinforcing the names of the directions, I want to take this time to teach the kids more about the states’ names and location within the US, so we start wit...