Desperate times call for desperate measures. Breanna is still coughing like a crazy person so she couldn’t really go outside to play since it was pretty cold out. Also, with Hayley off from school, we sent her extremely filthy snow suit over to George’s parents’ house since they have a clothesline in their basement. As a result, no one was able to go out to this afternoon.
Unfortunately, I had to work. Also, my laptop decided to commit suicide by way of a corrupted boot disk or some such thing, so George was hard at work trying to work his way in to save my documents and whatnot so that he could format and re-install my operating system (dear Vista, I hate you). By the way, he did indeed find that last resort success when he managed to use a CD to boot up in Linux, and he pulled all my files to safety. PLEASE BACK YOUR SHIT UP. You don’t want to know how many times I was thinking I would need to breathe into a paper bag last night when I couldn’t sleep because I hadn’t backed up in “awhile” and by “awhile” I really mean “what kind of idiot doesn’t back up over a year of photos, holy crap?!”
Anyway.
So when I get desperate for a bit of peace amongst fighting siblings, you can tell because that’s when I do something crazy. Today that showed when I pulled out the Moon Sand. Let me put it to you this way: I bought them Moon Sand as a joint Christmas present in 2007 and I think this was the 4th time it’s been out. It’s not as cool as it looks on TV, but the biggest problem is that it’s a pain of epic proportions to clean it up when they’re done.
However, I have to say that this sand – which used to be white, blue, purple, pink, and yellow, and is now a big blob of gray – kept those kids playing for over two and a half hours together. There was minimal arguing, I only had to step in a few times to remind Hayley that it’s not fair to hog 7/8 of the sand while leaving a wee pile for Breanna, and they were mostly quiet other than the chattering at each other. Two and a half hours!
Seriously, that more than made up for the fact that it took me about 20 minutes to completely clean it up when they were done. Still, I am looking forward to getting that snow suit back and taking them outside to burn off some steam.
What’s your desperate time filler?
[What’s your desperate time filler?]
Cooking 101. Everyone has aprons – special ones would be nice. They pick what gets cooked (the only rule is that all or most ingredients have to be in the house or adjustments to the recipe occur on the fly). I handle knives and hot things. The mini-chefs do the safe stuff (everything else).
Soups? Stews? Cakes?
Cake baking and the giant box of crafts that gives me nightmares but really, really holds their attention.
My step-son put Mood Sand on one of his xmas lists but we never got it because no one uses the tons of play-doh we have. So how did the sand become one gray color?
Baking (banana bread). Crafting. Having a tea party.
Oh I pink puffy heart moonsand…my carpet however, not so much! *lol*
We paint. Or bake. Bread is a fave right now. 🙂
Moon Sand is a favorite over here. I certainly prefer it over Play-Doh, which I’ve banned from the house!
Kilas last blog post..Friday, wrapping up the week…
Talk about a round about way in finding you two. I saw your post on another blog and followed it here. I wasn’t sure it was you till I saw the birth pages and George’s ugly mug ;).
The kids look beautiful and say “Hello” to George for me.
Our current desperate time filler is baking muffins. We’ve so far avoided having to pull out the Moon Sand. We somehow ended up with two sets at Christmas and have been hiding them since.
Nicole – It just kind of turned grey because the largest pack was white, and they mixed it with all the other colors and it just sort of blended together.
Undercover Brother – OMG! What blogs are you reading that led you here? Nice to hear from you! Keep hiding the Moon Sand, you’ll be better off, though it really is great when you’ve run out of other ideas.
That just LOOKS like a mess waiting to happen! I like baking with the kids when we’re pent up…but eating the final product always seems to backfire on me! I may have to bite the bullet and invest in some mooon sand!
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