A few of my friends here are stir crazy.  Or frustrated with a not-so-great beginning of school.  Or stir crazy and frustrated with a not-so-great beginning of school.  To which I say: I know.  I have been there... recently and frequently LOL!

So here is Mrs. Incredible's Guide on Things to Do for the Penniless yet Stir Crazy: (warm weather version)

• Put swimsuits on your kids (and yourself), then go outside.  Get the hose, turn it on, and run around the yard squirting them... sounds crazy, but trust me, it gets a LOT of angst out and is fun, too!
• Give everybody a bag.  Go out in your neighborhood, or to a park, or just in your yard and have everybody collect cool things they find, then come home and have show and tell.
• Take you normal everyday lunch out to a park and have a picnic.
• Go to the pool for a last hurrah before it closes.
• Go to the zoo, museum, or wherever you have a pass... just take and impromptu trip there.  Take lunch and snacks along so it can stay cheap.
• Go to the library.
• Find a local farm where you can go and see animals for free or cheap.
• Find the cool play places around in stores/restaurants.  For instance, we have a toy sore around the corner that has a huge playroom in the back with lots of little tykes houses and thomas train tables... we go there with the understanding that if ANYONE whines for toys, we are leaving IMMEDIATELY.
• Look in the paper and see if there are any free programs going on- storytimes, park programs, etc.  and go there.
• If you have such a thing in your area, sign up and do a market research study.  I have done focus groups on lots of neat products, and usually it involves me sitting in a room for 1 hour talking to grownups (yay), snacks (yay), and my children get to go in a fun playroom with child care and play while I do it, which they LOVE (check it out ahead of time, of course), and the best part is it pays!  usually $25-$50 for the hour of my time that I got to talk to grownups!  Every once in a while, that is a nice thing.
• Go feed the ducks somewhere.
• Go to grandma's, cousins, or whoever else is around.
• Playdate!
• Offer to swap kids with a friend... you take hers one day, and then she takes yours and you get a day to yourself... well worth it.
• Go for a bike ride.
• Go out to a field and play soccer together or fly a kite.
• Mom's mental health day:  Dad takes a day off work, does something fun with the kids, and mom gets the whole day to herself.
• Go visit a nursing home.. take games and/or books and let the kids have fun with the residents there... it will minister to everyone involved.
• Grab a Family Fun magazine and see if anything in there grabs you.  Do it.
• Don't laugh... if I am really in need of sanity, I have been know to put everyone in the car with toys, snacks or whatever will keep them happy, put a book on tape on for them or whatever music they like, then put on my ipod and drive around listening to something I want to hear for an hour.  Of course, this is not free because of high gas prices, but when you are desperate.. well...
• do something crazy..... fingerpainting with shaving cream on cookie trays, having backwards/crazy/uposide down day, putting on loud music with a beat and having a dance, whatever.  If you are laughing, you are doing it right.
• Have a pizza party where you all make pizza dough and everyone rolls out and tops their own pizza.  Then you spread a blanket out on the floor in front of the tv, put on a good movie, get in pjs or sweats and have a pizza party!
• If your kids are little enough, put them all in the tub with loads of toys and bubbles.  Let them play in there as long as they want.. if it gets cold, just scoot them all to the very back and add straight hot to the tub, then mix it in.
• If you have a minivan like I do, open up the doors in the driveway and let the kids play "Airplane" or rocket ship or clubhouse or whatever in there.  I stay right by in a lawn chair and have been known to get an hour or more of peace reading a good book while they did something they thought was SO cool.

I think that's it for my ideas right now, but you can see that if you just do stuff in a new way, it can be pretty fun.  ESPECIALLY if they think that it is something you would never let them do... they look at you like you have cracked, which in and of itself is pretty funny.

***My disclaimer:  Not all of these ideas will work for everyone.  I don't want to hear you don't have a zoo nearby or have shaving cream allergies or whatever... these are just some suggestions to get you started. ;)

I would love to hear more ideas from you ladies out there...especially you, Eyecorn, if you are reading this, you wild and crazy gal!  And JenIg, too, who has won my UTMOST respect in this regard due to her invention of the awesome Jungle Bomb game! (Click picture link in Coie's blog to see it for yourself!)

And if you try and of these things, it goes without saying that I will need to see pictures and read a post about it on your blog :)

So, instead of going nuts, I say.. GO NUTS!

Have fun!