Celebrating red, white & blue was a relaxing day for our crew or as relaxing as a house full of seven people can be! I'll rewind through the day. I love that our kids don't even know what rewind means, ha! So, the kiddos went to bed before fireworks even hit the skyline. We are lame parents & don't even take them to see the bright & sparkling sky on the celebration of America's Birthday! I think the word lame is appropriate because they are just now realizing they exist & it's not because we told them! Basically, we have not mustered up the energy to take everyone out way past bedtime. The girls could easily handle it but the boys, oh my! It's just not worth it yet. Anyway, all lost their marbles by 8 o'clock & hit the sack covered in sunscreen & bug spray.
Before the marbles rolled away....
Our friends Matt, Jen & their cute little Henry joined us. They are holding a patriotic picture Eloise colored for them.
Here is the artist with her art. She drew the picture on the left & said she did the US flag....it sure looked a lot like the Texas flag. LOVE IT! Texas did use to be it's own country & should be celebrated I guess : )
Arlo took a snooze then smiled for the camera.
The earlier part of the day was spent doing a craft I found in desperation. When we visited my parent's house at the beginning of the summer Owen played with my brother's old periscope. From that day forward he has tried to make a periscope out of every cylindrical shaped object & is SO mad when he can't see what he wants to! He takes paper towel roll after paper towel roll, bends the ends & then tells me it won't work. He follows me around all the time asking me to make him one. Enter Pinterest. Seriously, what did we do before Pinterest? I found a tutorial on making one out of PVC pipes so mama bird + 5 took a trip to Home Depot. We were wandering around looking for fork lifts to watch & attracted plenty of attention (as expected). We have been a few times in the past couple months while I have worked on another project & I am always thankful for all the help we get. I think we stand out amidst their usual shoppers in the lumber or pipe area.
Back to the periscopes. I was in shock when I saw how many options there were for pipes & connectors! We looked & looked, asked for some assistance with having a pipe cut down to the length needed & were on our way to the checkout. Once she was ringing all the pieces up I realized I had chosen ones that were different sizes....grrrr. So back to the aisle we went. Once we had what we actually needed, we paid & were on our way to the car. I started loading everyone up & looked at my 6 foot PVC pipe & thought, where on earth am I going to put that in my vehicle with all these car seats??? The funny part is that the same thing happened with a 6 foot board earlier in the summer. Both times I have been parked near the contractor parking area & have been offered help by the nicest guys. I'm sure they were laughing in their trucks & making bets on whether I could play Tetris or not. Then out of the kindness of one of their hearts (two times) they decided to rescue me. They jammed it in there somehow & I prayed we would make it home without getting in a car accident. We did & I was unable to un-jam it so we could get the party started.
4th of July morning the project began. Rob cut the pipe into 4 pieces while I cut 2 inch cardboard squares & glued circular mirrors onto them. The kids got to work with some paint so they would be officially camouflaged & within a couple hours we were ready to play!
Grammy & Papa came by for a visit, lunch & a game of spy on the neighbors across the street.
They were so cute hiding out behind the only tree we have in our backyard.
Instead of "Telephone" we can play "Periscope" end to end which actually offers a clearer sound.
Poor little Arlo didn't get to have one so he would wait till someone wasn't looking & steal it. He decided to go elephant style & spy under things since it was a bit heavy.
By the end of the day all the mirrors fell off due to the hot glue being hot again. Should have thought of that when we knew it would be over 100 degrees. The boys were jamming sticks & the like down into the ends...that was nice. It was one of those moments where I want to yell "Don't you see I am trying to do something fun for you & you are destroying it??" I think I kept that to myself although my memory may not serve me well a month later. I have tried a few different methods that have held for a bit but they are currently being used to roll golf balls through. The boys, or mostly Owen has hi-jacked all four, perfectly aligns the holes & maintains the right incline to send ball after ball down. Basically it is just another thing to keep that engineering brain occupied. I can't ever have enough of those!
No conclusion to the 4th of July/periscope making party other than we are glad the kids aren't tall enough to use them to peep over the fence! Maybe next year we will use them to watch the fireworks.
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