Summer toys

My children are living the high life this summer. Thanks to hand-me down toys from our friends we have things that we normally wouldn't have had. One of our friends gave us a small pool, a wading pool that is about 12 feet in diameter, but a pool none the less. The kids have enjoyed it even though it has been still pretty cold to be swimming. I have tried to keep them out when it is too cold, but sometimes you just have to let them learn their lessons. I sadly don't have pictures of them swimming yet, but I probably will have a ton by the end of the summer. I just know that their first time of swimming the wind was blowing and it was cold out that I could see their lips turning blue and they were shivering and I finally had to pull a parental override and call them out after about 10 minutes as I didn't want to have any hypothermic children.

The other fun toy was a trampoline. Another friend gave us the frame and springs, but we discovered the jumping mat wasn't good. We looked online and found one for the right price and had it shipped. We put it together this weekend and the kids have been outside on it most of the time. We are going to have to replace the sliding glass door to the back yard with a revolving door because they are in and out of it so much. It has been a constant come in and tell me they want me to come and see what they can do, or come in and see how much time someone has left. As a safety thing we have told the kids that they can only jump 2 at a time and we have even had to go so far as say who they can and can't jump with (there is just too much size difference in some of my kids to have them jumping with younger siblings and still be safe). We have also put a time limit so that everyone gets fair amount of time on the tramp. I took this picture right after the tramp was fixed....we let them jump all at once just to see how it would go. I think that the look on their faces tells the whole story. They have never had a tramp and have always had to go to a friend's house to jump. Now we are going to have some fun in our own backyard.