With school over and most of our regular activities done for the summer, I thought I’d have a tough time keeping the kids occupied (particularly with our babysitters out of town for three weeks — since when do grandparents get summer holidays? Sigh.) Fortunately, that hasn’t been the case so far. We did a road trip to Kamloops on Saturday to see Dave and Tanya’s new place, which was cool. We hardly ever do road trips, so it was kind of nice to get out of town without getting on a plane. Dave and Tanya don’t have kids, but they do have a dog, and Brayden actually spent much of his time playing with the dog’s toys. Both boys performed well overall and both of them fell asleep in the car on the way home, so good times all around.

The next day we went to a neighborhood BBQ where there were 75 guests, 25 of them children. By now I’m used to Justin being the only kid his age who can do certain things (like read at a third grade level) and also the only kid his age who can’t do certain things (like ride a bike, zip up his coat or use the potty consistently), so it was amazing to see him blend into a crowd of kids he’d never seen before. Brayden was right in the thick of things, too, which was no surprise, but I was amused to see some of the older kids who’d been hired to oversee the little ones trying (and failing) to keep him out of trouble. Such is life.

I don’t know what it is about water that fascinates kids, but I love the fact that all I need to do every afternoon is fill our little paddling pool and let the boys run wild. Between the pool, the hose and the trampoline, they stay busy for hours. For an added bonus, they generally wear themselves out so much that they crash early at night — a couple times Brayden has been lights out before 6 p.m. and slept straight through to 6 or 7 a.m. NICE.