Summer Style Schedule

I hate hearing, "I'm so boooorrreeed".

So at the end of the school year, I created a Summer Style Schedule. It was designed to keep every hour of the day occupied with some kind of activity or at least prepare me with suggestions when the boredom bug bites (now how much did that alliteration rock, c’mon).

Every day is mapped out the same (scriptures, breakfast, housekeeping tasks, etc.) until the afternoon when the day just seems to drag along the slowest and we need to call in the special forces of entertainment.

Each day has a theme called Daily Specials:

Monday: Nana’s House because we meet Katie Mae there for Porter’s piano lessons and we swim and play until everyone is good and tired.

Tuesday: Science Day is designed to perform or make something scientific-y that I have prepared or Porter has chosen.

Wednesday: Kitchen Creation Day where Porter and London choose something from one of my recipe books and we make it. Last week the kids made their own bread people; today we’re scheduled to make pretzels (could get interesting).

Thursday: Field Trip Day I originally thought we would go to a park or museum or movie but last week we just went back to Nana’s house to swim and this week we’re going to play with cousins at Aunt Colleen’s house in Queen Creek while mommy gets her hair done by Jessica.

Friday: Craft Day which we skipped last week but this week we’ll be making Father’s Day cards.

Some days the activities don’t last very long or things come up and they get shifted around but I’ve tried to make sure that even if we don’t do the morning routine according to plan we still squeeze in the Daily Special. So far it really has helped to keep “I’m so bored” at bay.

Last week for Science Day we recreated an outdoor oven that was made at Porter’s Cub Scout Day Camp. It was made with a cardboard box covered in aluminum foil, a wire hanger rack running through the middle, and sitting over a bed of hot coals. At the Day Camp, I looked it over pretty closely and thought it seemed easy enough to make on our own so we gave it a shot. Two rolls of heavy aluminum foil and eleven wire hangers later our oven was done. I haven’t lit coals in a long time so I was a little rusty. When they didn’t just light by tossing a match on top of them I remembered they probably needed a little lighter fluid. I looked and couldn’t find any. In the spirit of Science Day, I thought of other flammable liquids I had thought and came back to the patio with hair spray and nail polish remover. You can already tell where this is going, can’t you? I doused those briquettes with everything I got and while I was still pouring Porter tossed on the match. The flames went up six feet in a big WOOSH! and Port jumped back just in time and my arm hair got a little singed but we had a healthy fire going. While the coals got ready we made our cookie dough and then put it in the oven. It took about 20 minutes to bake. I think I could have used more coals to speed up the bake time, but we all know it was a good thing I kept the fire small.

Here’s how it went.

This pose was Porter's idea, but London started melting on Daisy and that made her mad.

This same night Olen lit more briquettes (with the lighter fluid on the top shelf in the storage room, wouldn't ya know) and he baked fish fillets in our oven for fish tacos and Porter made more cookies. Why is it that when there's fire involved men always volunteer to cook? Oh well. Dinner and dessert were great and no oven or stove was ever turned on.