Fresh Lemonade and Crabby Kids

The baby woke up crabby, but seemed to get better throughout the day.

I worked from home today (because I had a check-up in the afternoon) and was surprised for a bit all was quiet. The little two were napping at the same time and the oldest laid down to rest too.
I thought to myself - great! They'll be well rested for our middle one's friend who was coming over for a pizza play date (I disclosed to the mom that the baby had a fever last night, but she was still game!).

But, no. They rested to get their animal on. Seriously. They were embarrassing. Running around like crazy, not listening. When I go through the online diary over the past couple of days I can see why - we are having a lot of fun packing it all in, but we're doing way too much and running ragged at this point.

We had planned tonight's play date a few weeks back assuming since it's August we could use the pool; however, it felt like Sept. So the kids ran around, but the middle one and his friend are only 3 and need to keep being directed back to each other to actually play together....thankfully I had goodies on hand to do just that!

Get It Done Tip - I have a closet where I store little toys I find on clearance that can be used as a surprise when we have little visitors -- whether it is punch balloons, glow in the dark necklaces, bubbles, etc. It's great to stock up on these things so you have some fun surprises that make the play date a little extra special and the visitor gets a "party favor". The kids had a ball.

As I mentioned we had a special treat of pizza, salad and the mom brought dessert. I cut up some fruit and used little plastic sword toothpicks to incentive all the boys to dig in (it worked!). I also am not a juice fan - my kids drink water, but for play dates I like to make this fresh-squeezed lemonade. It is SO easy and delish!

Fresh Lemonade

4 lemons

8 cups water 

 1/3 cup water

1 cup sugar

Mix 1/3 cup water and 1 cup of sugar in saucepan and stir over medium heat until sugar is dissolved.

Juice lemons.

Pour 8 cups water, sugar water and lemon juice into pitcher and stir.

Chill in fridge and serve over ice if desired.

Thankfully the next few days should be relatively quiet!