Zoo Shapin' Fun!

(AT: Remember - After Tonsils)

During our recovery time at home, we started going to town (or to the zoo) with our play dough.  We made some play dough and used bought play dough... the more the better.  But we have a little issue over here with "eating the play dough" so we try to build buildings, pirate ships and things like that with the play dough so as not to confuse anyone that we should actually eat the stuff...

The whole "not making stuff we eat" limits the universe of actual play dough toys that are available.  I did find this fun looking Zoo set and the kids LOVE it!  I even love it.  It is fun to make all the animals and the baby animals...

We have spent lots and lots of play dough time with this purchase!  Highly recommend it.

I love a good "smushing up the dough" session and it turns out the kids do too!  Although Vera loved walking around with the little bucket and playing with the play dough containers just as much!

It's all fun!

our homemade play dough

hard at work

lots of concentration

playdough bucket

play dough containers!

Feeling hot, hot, hot - like in the Caribbean...

so we decided it was Pirate time!!!

We started last night pre-shabbot and busted out our pirate/Caribbean tchotkes... (yes I have bin of those too... in the basement).

We had some new buddies over for shabbot last night and had a blast - inside the house, outside the house, just all around shabbot fun!

Then they left, and Mother Nature went crazy on us (like bat crazy - as if Father Time was having an affair and she just found out crazy...)

The heavens opened and there was a "Wizard of Oz" storm.  When we awoke this morning (everyone slept in extra late?!?), we were sooo lucky.  We had power and no damage - but the rest of DC area - not so lucky.  This morning we tried to clean up a bit - the backyard was a complete mess.  We put Jonah and Vera were in their bathing suits and decided it was time for a pirate party, complete with digging for treasure... (somehow, I had a feeling we might need this little activity this weekend and the sand bin was filled with treasure and ready... go me!).    They had a blast finding gold coins, plastic pirates, little pirate rings, and pirate tatoos.  I tried to sweep up and get the backyard in a semi-inhabitable state.  After a while, it was clean enough, it was snack/lunch time and it was too hot to stay outside... we went in for the day! 

After lunch, Vera took a nap.  What to do with Jonah?  He was still playing with his gold coins and pirates.  I took a gamble.  I broke out the playdough...

I LOVE PLAYDOUGH!!!  I think I loved it as a kid too... but I have been trying to do playdough with Jonah since he was 2... it hasn't worked.  He insists on ingesting canisters of it.  People suggested I make my own and it would be ok for him to eat it... but I just can't condone it.  It is enough he has large samplings of the dam paint... I draw the line at actually eating full cans of play dough.  So we just don't do it.  (Although, I do believe when he does it at school, he does not eat it...)

So we tried.  And it was pretty much a success... minor tastings... but he kept saying outloud - "not gonna eat it mom, just playing with it and making a big pirate ship..."  Which is what he did.  He made a pretty wonderful pirate ship.

Kick it up for the pirates!  We do love us some good pirates over here.  Did you know that there were Jewish Pirates in the Caribbean?  (see here) Well, there were!  So clearly, we fit right into the Caribbean pirate ways - with a bit of Jewish style! 

In full dislosure, we watched a ton of TV today... like the rest of the day we watched TV.  Thank goodness we had power!!  We did watch a episode of Jake and the Neverland Pirates... that went with our theme of the day!