For my Summer Fun List — on which I am making great progress! — I listed doing “mommy days” with each of my three bigger kids. Since the 2-year-old consumes much time and energy, I feel like they don’t get as much attention, and I like to spend time with them individually. So each summer, we take a day to do something fun that the child chooses.
Monday was Mommy Day #3, with my 7-year-old. Though since I took the 2-year-old, solo, into Chicago during our family trip, I guess that could have been a Mommy Day with him! Anyway, whether this was #3 or #4, we drove to Dutch Wonderland, and spent a few hours riding the roller coasters and panning for minerals and breaking geodes, which was what he really liked doing. The 10-year-old liked the water park when we went a few weeks ago; the 7-year-old told me he didn’t want to get wet. Very different kids!
Anyway, he was getting bored with the place a few hours in, and I struck a deal that if I bought him a little toy at the gift shop, he would agree to go to the National Christmas Center nearby. He agreed, 
and then he actually really liked it. There were a lot of old toys, a walk-in nativity scene (with a stuffed mountain lion indicating the perils Mary and Joseph may have encountered on the walk from Nazareth to Bethlehem), and many Santas. Good times.
He was happy enough with the trip, though I think our timing could have been better. He has a lot of camps this summer, and I have travel too, so Monday was our best option. But we’d just been on vacation, capped with our 12-hour trip, and I think he was tired. He really wanted to go home and decompress with our computer. Oh well.
In other news: Are you in Pennsylvania, or nearby? I’ll be speaking at a women’s conference on “Mindfulness and Marketing” at Bear Mountain Creek Resort on July 19th. There are still tickets available — use this link for a discount.
Photos: On the lagoon boat at Dutch Wonderland, and looking at the recreated Woolworth’s in the National Christmas Center.