Summer Solstice

Yesterday was the summer solstice and since it was SO hot and such a long day, I decided we needed to celebrate!  My kids and 5 other neighbor kids came over to play and I was sort of prepared.  My mom sent home water balloons that she had along with an old baby bath sponge since I had some game ideas for both.  I stopped on the way home (secretly) and picked up 4 quarts of Rita's too.

After dinner I started filling up water balloons and the kids came over - it was still over 90 degrees!  (Big thanks to my neighbor, Nancy, who is 9 months pregnant, who came down with her boys.  My other neighbor wanted to stay with Sophia but her younger daughter was sleeping.)  I thought I had a lot of balloons....a bucketful with 8 kids is NOT a lot.  But they had fun.  We did a typical balloon toss and when that wasn't a whole lot of fun (either one kid was a lousy thrower or the other was a lousy catcher), we just had a water balloon fight.  Now THAT they liked.  I turned the sprinkler on for them as I got ready for our next game...sponge relay.

We actually had 2 evenly matched boys and girls teams so we just divided them up like that.  They had to submerse their sponge in water and then race to the deck steps and squeeze it into their cup.  First team to fill up their cup twice won.  It was pretty much a tie both times.

They liked that game so much, we played twice!  I had to get ready for the next game and so we let them run in the sprinkler again.  It was so nice to see all of them playing so well together.  The next game was Wet T-Shirt Relay.  They lined up in boys versus girls again and then they had to send one team member down to get the t-shirt out of the bucket, put it on, and then run twice around the bucket.  Nancy and I were there to help them get it on.

The kids really enjoyed this one too although I was surprised that Caroline liked it as much as she did because they did a similar game at school for field day the past few years and she refused to play!  Maybe it's because they were all in their bathing suits last night.

Then it was time for Rita's!  (My photographer didn't get any photos of this part either, but I was grateful that he got 2 of the events.)  The kids were so excited to have four flavors to choose from - Cotton Candy, Blue Raspberry, Fudge Brownie, and Swedish Fish.  After all that running around they deserved a cool treat!

After snack time, I tried playing a game similar to Hot Potato with the sprinkler (the kid who is hopping over the sprinkler when the water stops is out) but that didn't work out so well.  We just let them frolic for a while longer before two of the sets of kids had to go home.  My kids and Sophia stayed out another hour or so and then Caroline had Sophia spend the night.

So all in all, I'd say it was a pretty fun evening.  Maybe it will become a tradition....I always felt like I wanted to celebrate the solstice somehow but wasn't sure how.  This may be the right way to do it!  (Of course having it be 100 degrees on the first day of summer helped too.)