Week 1, rain rain go away

It was a bit of a rough start with tonnes of rain in the forecast, however on the sunny side of things, it was back to preschool for the kids. The rain forced me to deal with one of the other mommy challenges I have, resorting to TV to entertain the kids when I just really got to get something done....like make supper, clean the bathroom or finally finish the cup of coffee I started at 7 am and have already reheated 3 times and it's now 10:30. So for the no TV time entertainment, I turned to some old standbys....

1. Dance Party. We used to do this everyday at 5:00 but it's been awhile now of 5:00 TV while I make supper. We had a lot of fun with this one with all three of us shaking a leg, (and head and a bum).
2. Play dough. This did require quite a bit of interruption in my chores, however, overall it kept their attention long enough to prep some food or wipe a mirror, or drink a coffee.
3. Paper airplanes. Held their attention for a short time, until the puppy started eating little dude's airplane.

Get out of the house activities:

1. Free play area at the mall. I know I said I wasn't going to take the kids to the mall, but I had to go to pick up some things and we decided to play on the large butterfly, and turtles instead of our usual stop at the coffee shop. The kids had a blast with another little boy there. The three of them challenged each other to make bridges on the butterfly with the other two crawling under, this eventually turned into chase and tag which then evolved into monster roaring (not sure how the other mall patrons felt about that one). We spent 1/2 hour there and when we left Miss J commented "Mom, I'm like so sweaty and hot"

I've also realized that I've set myself up for quite the challenge with no repeats, realizing that I have 52 different get our butts out the door activities for the year....I have to admit that I'm a little nervous about that now.....and I've really felt my reliance on TV when little dude asked to watch a show and I said no, his response was "Show makes me happy". Ouch! I'm an active mom and I feel like I'm creating couch potato kids, I HAVE to change that.