When it's 103 every day by noon...

You get up early and head outside before seven a.m. so that you can run, play, water plants, slide, swing, ride bikes, build sand castles, finger paint and on some days even swim. Then it's back inside by 10am (or sooner) and a long day of trying to find interesting things to do indoors begins.

When we lived in Minnesota I often heard moms of little people complaining about how everyone developed cabin fever in the winter and could hardly wait for the first day above freezing to get their kids outside to burn off all that crazy kid energy.  It seems that in the southwest we have the opposite problem and develop cabin fever from May through at least October. In addition to reverse cabin fever we also have contra S.A.D. this time of year except for me it's more like mean, cranky, sweaty, pregnant Mama who feels exhausted at the thought of buckling and unbuckling her three children into sweltering hot car seats just for a quick twenty minute story time at the library.

[I know it's just the most interesting thing in the world to go on and on about the weather, especially when it's summer and I'm complaining about how "Oh so very hot it is"!  My, what great observational skills you have. It has been known to be hot in the summer]

Most days the kids are still in pajamas when we head outside which is just the right dress code for finger painting. Here's some of the fun we had earlier this week.

 They started off very nice, clean and neat.

Then Max got involved and all bets were off.

Pretty soon the red,blue,yellow and green looked like this.

On the next go round I separated the boys from Sophia so she could work at painting yellow suns, green trees, and blue skies instead of just a brown mushy glob.

Meanwhile Max did this.

And some more of this.

Ta Dah! Masterpiece complete.