Water War

I picked up a cool-looking water balloon set at Costco a few weeks ago: it claimed to inflate, fill, and tie off 35 water balloons at a time, within 30 seconds, and the water balloons are biodegradable. I couldn't not try it! The box came with 350 balloons in 10 different colors, and a collapsible plastic bowl to keep the balloons in.

I figured the kids would probably have fun just dropping the balloons and watching them burst. With ten bunches of 35 balloons each, it would probably give us ten afternoons of fun.

So last weekend, I inflated one bunch (hooray! it was as easy as advertised!) and let them warm in the sun while the kids napped. When they were up and changed into bathing suits, we took them out back and explained the concept of water balloons.

They took to it like ducks to water. They had equal fun dropping the balloons, throwing them at each other, squeezing them to make them squirt, throwing them at the house, sliding them down the slide, etc. To be fair, I think MJ was having just as much fun as they were. Within minutes the bunch was gone.

"More!" they begged. So we blew up another bunch. And another ... and another. We used up all 350! The kids loved helping to blow them up -- it was so easy, they could almost do it themselves.

CC and Little Man were the most adventurous. Sweet Pea liked playing with the water balloons, but didn't want anyone (like Daddy) throwing them at her. So she spent most of her time on the periphery, yelling for everyone to stop lobbing balloons in her direction, then darting in to grab some when she saw an opening.

Today I went to Costco and bought another box.