Texas Schleichers: End-of-Summer FUN! :)

In no particular order, here are some of the fun things we did toward the end of the summer ...

Ian and his friend, Caleb, went to a few movies together. A local theater was showing a kids' movie each week for only $1. Caleb's mom, Aliceson, and I took turns taking the big boys to the show and playing with their little brothers at home. Aunt Chelsea came with us to see Smurfs 2!

The boys helped with lots of cooking and baking! Even Ryan is showing an interest in helping measure ingredients, stir things, and crack eggs!

We did lots of reading this summer! It was so heartwarming to see Ian read books to Ryan at various times, too! The boys each participated in the summer reading program at the library as well as the one at our local grocery story, H-E-B.

We played lots of games this summer. Aunt Chelsea (and Uncle Jon) were always willing playmates. Some of Ian's favorite games this summer were Guess Who and Trouble.

We potty trained Ryan! By God's grace, it seemed like we started at just the right time. He caught on so quickly and learned to go pee and poop in the potty in a matter of about two days. Now that he's been potty trained about four weeks, he rarely has accidents and even wakes up most mornings dry (though we do still put him in a diaper at night time). Ian was a big helper and encourager in the process. It probably helped that the "big helper" got whatever prize or reward (usually a few M & Ms) that the trainee got. Ryan was pleased with all of the attention and seemed very proud of himself once he caught on. We are certainly so proud of our little man!

We tried some out some fun-sounding Pinterest ideas. One morning, we mixed together corn starch, water, and food coloring. The boys started by applying this "sidewalk paint" mixture to our sidewalks and driveway with paintbrushes.

Then, we got out tennis balls, dipped them into the "sidewalk paint," and threw the balls so we could see the prints the ball left as it bounced along the driveway. (No, Ryan is not wearing shorts. This is during our major potty training push.)

The boys discovered it was just as much fun to dip the balls into the paint and just slam them onto the driveway while still holding onto them.

It made some pretty neat designs on the driveway.

The boys also found that it was fun and interesting to splatter the paint with the paintbrushes.

Likely the most fun of all, though, was dipping flyswatters into the paint and creating cool designs by swatting the driveway.

What a fun morning!

Another fun Pinterest idea was filling pairs of balloons with various items (pinto beans, macaroni, flour, sugar, rice, oatmeal, etc.) If you enlarge the picture, you can tell by the flour on the boys' faces that they were active participants in using funnels to fill up the balloons. After all of the pairs were filled up, we mixed them together. Ian had to use his sense of feel to match up the pairs. It was fun and actually was a little harder than I might have thought (the macaroni and pinto beans felt very similar at first).

A huge highlight of the summer was having Aunt Chelsea and Uncle Jon and Ace live with us for about seven weeks. We also loved being a (small) part of their house-buying process by going to see a few houses along the way and providing feedback when they asked (and even sometimes when they didn't :)). Their realtor helped them find a really great place that's super close to our church. Since Uncle Jon was away at master's classes when they closed on the house, we were excited to get to help Chelsea start getting settled in their new place.

On one of our last days of summer, the boys and I went to the children's museum. The boys stuck together during most of the trip to the museum and seemed especially excited this visit about burying dinosaurs in the rubber mulch, shopping at the grocery store,

and making Lego creations.

We also had the chance to spend some time with friends this summer. Most of the time, we didn't even take pictures! On this particular day, some friends invited us over for a playdate and lunch at their house.