So how DO you occupy all those kids????

So for the last couple of days we have had to care for extra kids and keeping them busy was the best method to combat homesickness, cousin drama, and all sorts of other mischief! Here are 2 of my favorite things we came across!

Well, first off we stumbled across a blessing at Michael's. They have these really great models for kids for $1.00! They have about 16 different models to choose from, Papa (my father in law) donated $20.00 to the model cause, probably so we would get out of his store and quit eating all the Hagen Daz! So we mossied over to Michael's and each kid got to chose 3 models! This kept them busy for quite awhile, however the glue that came with it was sorry so I let them use my mini glue gun to assemble the pieces! It was a wonderful project and I thank God for letting us discover something reasonable to help me keep them busy!

I loved the covered wagons! However, the most popular were the sailboats which didn't make it into the photos!

Another idea that we did was to hit the Salvation Army. They have all sorts of outdated electronics just begging for little kids with screw drivers to take apart! So we marched in, all 6 of us and my pregnant belly too and went to discover some treasures - there were treasures aplenty but, they wanted around $10.00 for each! Dear hubby would not be very happy if we were $60.00 lighter for stuff to take apart - so I did what any respectable teacher would do and went to the manager and explained what I wanted to do and she said, "Oh that area really needs to be cleaned out - lets see what we can find!" So we went over again and came away with an old cassette player from the 80's, an alarm clock, a 35 mm camera, a VCR, and a telephone - for $8.00! We were all very happy and we set to work when we came home with screw drivers, a mallet, electrical tape, wire cutters/strippers, & a pair of pliers! It was great fun!

The tape recorder in mid demolition!

The tape recorders guts - minus the speaker!

The VCR guts (note the scissors we used to cut off the cord - before giving it to them to play with, if we didn't I was sure someone would try to plug it in while disassembled!)

The telephone and its insides!

The kids used their electronic finds and had so much fun discovering new things. Hubby taught them about positive and negative wires and they used a 9V battery to make the phones bell ring and they used the speaker from the phone and the tape recorder to make Morris code and had a great game of spies! However, the boys were most pleased when they realized if you held the positive wire onto the positive terminal it made a sound very similar to passing gas - which elicited REPEATED belly laughter!

The girls however decided to make a robot that could talk! They used a very old repeater from a very old baby doll that would repeat ANYTHING it heard! (I was happy to let the girls disassemble the doll - it was eerily like CHUCKIE!) So Daddy helped them wire the apparatus and they duck taped it into an oatmeal box and thus they created a robot!

Can you see all 7 eyes from the robot they lovingly plagiarised named Wall-een!

I think Daddy enjoyed this project very much! I think it made him feel a bit MacGyver-ish! Although his life didn't depend on wiring a bomb from a VCR and a tape recorder, but the glint was in his eye!

My sweet nephew is now home recovering and went home with a pic line to continue IV antibiotics, but at least he is home! So today ended our kid duty as they packed up to go home and lovingly embrace their brother. Thanks for all of the prayers!