Good Clean Fun!

We do a babysitting co-op on Friday nights for 'Date-night' with a few couples from the ward (and the old ward :). We have LOVED it! One couple watches all of the kids for 3 1/2 hours every Friday night on a rotating schedule, which allows for everyone to have consistant date-nights out with our husbands. We were never very good a scheduling babysitters, so this has worked out to be SO convenient. We have done it for over a year now with the same couples, so by now the kids are so used to seeing each other every Friday, they have all become such good friends (and we have had so much fun wathching them grow up so fast!). Last night we played outside for awhile, but the kids were disappointed that we had emptied out the sandbox (the lid have been left off, so most of the sand had blown away, but what was left was pretty gross, so we dumped it). We'll get new sand in the spring, but for now it's empty. The kids all wanted to play with the sand toys, but that's not very fun without sand. I had an idea - uh-oh :). I pulled out a couple of empty shallow under-bed storage containers and put them on the picnic table, then filled them with a few inches of water. The kids then played with the sand toys in the water, filling buckets, sifting water, and having fun. Yea for moments of genius! It provided a good hour of entertainment for six kids! Another favorite game was to play 'monkeys' on the jungle gym (shown in the back left corner of the photo). The zookeeper had to keep all of the 'monkeys' in the 'cage' - which proved to be very entertaining for Matt and I, as well as the kids. I tried to take pictures of that game, too, but it was getting dark and they didn't turn out. Anyway, thought I'd share my easy cheap entertainment idea :)