Double the Bubble Fun!

When Caida (my 7-year-old niece) came to hang out and spend the night with us last weekend, we wanted to make sure we actually did something FUN.  Usually she just gets on the computer, phone, or Wii--which are all fun for HER, and they DO allow me to still get things done around the house on a Saturday night, but it's not exactly the kind of thing that is going to make happy memories for her.  Especially now that she doesn't just live a 2-minute-drive down the street like she used to...

So I decided the theme of the evening would be bubbles.  Caida LOVES bubbles.  She will do just about anything for them.  So, Pinterest to the rescue, we first made our own bubble wands.  Not only is this a fun and cheap and quick kid craft, but I got to be a teacher and quiz her on patterns.  I let her do a couple of fun ones, too, of course...but we made patterned ones for her "brothers and sister" (the kids she lives with now).  She loved making so many to share!

Concentrating so hard!

The final collection.

Then I thought the glow-in-the-dark bubbles would be a lot of fun.  She would get to stay up late and we could enjoy the night within the safety of our patio.  All you do is break open a couple of glow sticks and pour in the glowy goodness into your bubble solution.  I discovered a few things about this that were a little disappointing...like they don't actually make BUBBLES when you do that (I had to add like 1/4 c. of dish soap to make it bubbly again), and then when you add the dish soap the glow-in-the-dark coolness of the whole thing looks really murky and loses its glow really fast.  Not to mention the bubbles themselves did not glow at all.  So it was a cool idea, but a little disappointing. Caida, in one of her most grown-up moments yet, said, "We did all that work for NOTHING?"  But she still had fun blowing bubbles at the couples walking by for an evening stroll.  :)  And it LOOKED awesome at first. :)  We made a nice mess on our porch with it all.

The next morning after Church we went to our apartment's sweet playground for a while.  It may not look like much, but those slides are kinda tall and there's one in the back, too.  And it's all VERY sturdy...even I could go on it. 

Okay, out of order, but the night before as we waited for it to get dark enough to try our experiment we made our own French bread pizzas for dinner.  Here's what Caida made with the extra plate:

And she REALLY wanted to take a picture of her first round nighttime meds. :)

It was a fun mini-weekend!  I'm trying to figure out what to do next time!