The Great Holtzie

Our Wacky Wednesday adventure for the last day of June was to see a stand-up comedian for kids:  The Great Holtzie.  Rose Tree Park offered this FREE show, and the weather was cool enough that we willingly not just sat on the grass, but in the direct sunlight.  I know the picture below does not show my kids, but it was one of my favorites from his website.  Besides, my kids were looking at each other while laughing hysterically for most of the show, so I figured it's close enough.

The Great Holtzie gave an amazing show that all of us loved.  To be fair, he really played to his audience.  Luckily, Chas and I still laugh at most little boy humor.  There were diaper jokes, jokes about worms, and plenty of bald jokes, but I loved the movie references that it seemed like only Chas and I got ("He rubs the lotion on himself . . .").  At one point he got a volunteer to run up to the snack bar as fast as he could to buy him a Sprite, screaming, "Run!  Faster!" the whole time.  When the kid got back to the stage, The Great Holtzie tipped him with cash, which was very nice, considering he never even drank the soda.  He then joked that he had told his wife this morning that he would somehow get some kid to run to the snack bar for him and work it into the act.  Too funny!

As we left, B started planning how we should hire him to do his eleventh birthday.  You know, since he already knows what kinds of parties he wants for his ninth and tenth birthdays.  And since his birthday is a whole seventh months away.  It's good to be prepared.

Tie Dying T-Shirts

Our original plan for today was to head over to Rose Tree Park for a FREE concert by Peter Moses, someone we all love seeing. 

However the weather report for today showed this:

Today High: 93

so we changed our plans.

Two summers ago we had made family t-shirts that we wore whenever we went on some kind of "field trip" which turned out to be very helpful, so I decided it was time to make new ones.  And A.C. Moore just happened to have white cotton t-shirts on sale - SWEET!

After soaking the shirts in the soda ash solution which came with the tie-dye kit, we each twisted our shirts and bound them with rubber bands.  Everyone had their own ideas of how their shirts would come out.  It will be really interesting to see if any of us twisted and turned it in just the right way to actually produce the intended effect.

Since there were only one pair of gloves we decided to take turns applying the dye.  I went first because, well, I called it.  Hey, the kids have to learn the rules about "calling" things sometime!  We each squirted the colors on specific places on our individual shirts, and everyone "oohed" and "aahed" watching the primary colors form other colors when mixed on the shirts.

Yeah, I know there's no picture of B tie-dying his shirt.  What can I say, I'm not perfect by a long shot!

The kids each dyed their own shirts in their 4th of July buckets.  I got these buckets from the Dollar Store a few years ago and wrote each of their names on the front with a black Sharpie along with a few stars.  They use it each year to collect the candy they get during the parade.  The amount of candy that is thrown at these kids during the parade has risen to an almost obscene amount, but that's a post for another day.  The buckets have come in handy so many times it's hard to believe they were only a dollar!

Here are the kids' shirts.  The directions say to cover them in plastic (oops - still haven't done that!) and leave them still for 24 hours, so they're not going anywhere.

And here are the grown-ups' shirts.  By the time it was Chas' turn, he couldn't take the begging anymore graciously let me dye his shirt for him.  I also found a t-shirt of mine that had a stain on it, so I dyed that, too.  By this point, all three kids had moved on to other stuff, Chas was reading a book, but I was still busy squirting colors here and there and watching them blend.  Hey, as long as I'm happy, that's what it's all about, right?!!