What, oh what, do we do with a teenager during the summer?

I have a lot to say about our first few weeks of summer.  We've had 4-H camp and soccer camp, and Relay For Life, which took up a great deal of my time and energy over the past couple of months.  But today I want to talk about other things - specifically, the Summer List.

I love reading other people's blogs.  I love crafty blogs, and thrifty living blogs, and, oddly enough, crunchy-type blogs about people living on homesteads and whatnot.  Most of all, though, I love parenting blogs - blogs by regular moms like me, who have much better ideas.  A few years ago I discovered the "Summer Lists", listing all the fun things the author wanted to do with her family that summer (I don't remember the first blog I found this on,) and I started making them myself, because, yay, what fun!  The problem with all these fun lists and mama blogs is, nobody I've liked seems to have a teenage boy!  Even the fun lists I've found for teens list mostly girl activities.  My boy likes to go outside and run around, but most of his friends like to spend most of their time inside, playing video games (which is what he's doing with his best friend, right now.) 

So I have a teen boy, a rather surly teen boy, by the way, and a drama queen of a tween girl, who both, oddly enough, still like to do things with me.  And I need to find things that both will enjoy, that won't cost too much money, and will make them happy without stressing me out.  The boy loves the zoo, so we'll probably try to get there once, and the girl loves to swim, and we'll do that a lot.  Our local parks department has a dodgeball and disc golf program in which I'll enlist the boy.  I really wish he had some other hobbies - even something nice and geeky like Magic or something.  Some other ideas:

1.  Paintball/laser tag
2.  Disc golf
3. 

Yeah, I really need help.  Any ideas?

Happy birthday to me...I had some coffee...

Hey hey, it's my birthday!  Ok, well actually it's 5 minutes after my birthday.  Here's a special, birthday edition of Thank*ful Thursday, on early squirrelly Saturday morning:

1.  My kids are home from camp!  It was a lovely break, but I missed them.  My boy really enjoyed being a junior counselor, and my girl said she wasn't really homesick at all after the first day.  As for me, I got chores done, but for the most part I spent the week doing whatever the heck I wanted.  Ha.

2.  My husband did super-well on the birthday present front this year.  My coffeemaker broke two weeks ago, and he bought me a new one - a Bunn!  It's superfast - My coffee is ready before I am!  And I told you all about the camera - I'm still figuring out the functions, but I will post more pictures from it.

3.  One super-fabulous friend has been helping me (read: doing most of the work) make purses out of pants to sell at Relay For Life.  They are really cute, and I'm hoping they'll sell really well.  I'll post pictures of them this week.  Relay is also building up to do well...we got a DJ, which is awesome, and the location is outstanding.  We're very excited.

4.  Facebook - where else do you get 75 happy birthday messages before you even speak to one person?  It makes this dork fell uber-popular.

5.  Much needed rain, and a good lazy day to enjoy it.

6.  The fact that there are so many amazing writers out there practicing their craft.  I just finished another excellent book, called The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton.  The story is full of beautiful imagery and captivating characters.  And it takes place in Cornwall!  I read a Nancy Drew book set in Cornwall when I was a kid, and I've wanted to visit ever since.  So good.

7.  Another super-fabulous friend made me salted caramel brownies for my birthday.  I've been dying to try them ever since she described them, and she made me a whole pan.  And came over to enjoy one with me whilst chatting.  AND she's going to make cake pops for my survivor gifts.  Awesome! (read in a sing-songy voice.)

8.  The summer is starting strong!

I have a lot of stuff on my mind, but it's late, so I'll wait to chat about it until later.  Some of my family is coming for dinner and cake tonight, so that should be fun.  My cat just started snoring rather loudly...I come downstairs to get away from the snoring in my own bed, and there is a cat snoring down here.  Noisy animals in this house...