Family Friday: Light-Up Basketball
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During long summer days, my youngest loves to play outside until dark. Keep the game going past dusk with this light-up basketball.
This ball lights up with every bounce and turns off automatically when you’re done for the night. It even comes with a spare set of batteries, good for up to 30 hours of play. This ball would make a great gift for your aspiring NBA All-Star.
FlashCatch’s light-up basketball is available at Amazon for less than $25.
Sales of note for 5/8:
(See all of the latest workwear sales at Corporette!)
- Ann Taylor – Mother’s Day Event: 40% off your purchase. Readers love this popover blouse, and their suiting is also in the sale.
- Banana Republic Factory – Up to 50% off everything + extra 20% off
- Brooks Brothers – Dress & sport shirts, 2 for $149
- Express – $39+ summer styles + 25% off everything else
- J.Crew Factory – Up to 60% off everything + extra 70% off clearance + 40%-50% off the Weekend Shop
- Lo & Sons – Mother’s Day Sale: Up to 40% off — reader favorites include this laptop tote, this backpack, and this crossbody
- M.M.LaFleur – Try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off
- Nordstrom – Up to 25% off
- Talbots – 50% off wear-now styles and all markdowns + 30% off tops, pants, jeans, and shorts
Favorite North America/Europe family vacation destinations that likely won’t be unpleasantly hot in late July or early August? It’s looking like camp and activity schedules may constrain us to end-of-summer vacations for a while and I can’t stand hot weather. We’ve been to Maine, Alaska, Washington state, San Francisco, Iceland and Switzerland fairly recently, and my 8 year old is currently devouring Anne of Green Gables books so I expect a visit to Canada’s maritimes provinces is in our future. Scotland is also high on my list.
I realize nothing is guaranteed and I seem to have terrible luck with unprecedented weather events (we were in London earlier this week when it hit 95F, the hottest May temperature ever recorded in the UK) but would still appreciate suggestions for places that are at least somewhat likely to be pleasant at this time of year.
Today in unintentionally hilarious things my husband has said: He mentioned that it was so nice that our daughter was at the same summer camp as her best friend and that we couldn’t have planned it better.
I had to tell him it WAS planned. Her mother is the one who mentioned the camp to me in the first place, and I signed my daughter up for the location that is less convenient for us because that’s where her friend was going. Somehow this all escaped him when we were discussing it. I guess he thinks I did the summer planning by throwing darts at a map?
I feel a bit ridiculous feeling this way at my age, but I admit to being a tad jealous of a woman I know from high school who has not only gone on to be successful in her STEM career, but also has literally the perfect body (always has) and is super fit and active with tons of friends and sports that she plays as an adult. Now she’s pregnant and looks so cute, whereas I simply looked bloated when I was pregnant with my son. I thought I would grew out of this kind of jealousy but in fact, it may be worsening as I navigate being not only at my heaviest weight ever postpartum, but also being less fit than I’ve ever been. We’ve dealt with SO much illness in the house (and some other random health complications) since my son was born that every attempt to get really consistent with exercise again has been thwarted. I keep on trying every single day, but man, I wish it were easier to look and feel good!
My husband wants us to take our kids on a road trip to the mountains this summer, probably in Colorado. This is a silly question, but what do you do with younger kids on this type of trip? They’re 7.5, 5.5, 3, so too young for any serious hiking.
(Edited to add that I’m generally on board with this trip idea, I just can’t quite figure out what it would look like.)
Over the long weekend, we invited family friends to go see a movie with us. Our son has been pretty good friends with their son for the past three years (same school/grade and same class for the first two years) and we’ve all hung out together as families a number of times over the years. After we had agreed on a time/place, the dad announced that a different family (whom we don’t know and aren’t friends with) would be attending the movie too. Then when we arrived at the theater, we found out that the two other families had done an escape room together prior to the movie. Am I being overly sensitive to feel like our friends’ behavior is kind of rude and hurtful? The parents didn’t ask us about inviting other people to the movie first, and didn’t invite us to join the escape room. Is there anything that I could say to the parents, or should I just accept that they just aren’t that into us?
On a related note to the screen question below- we recently toured a private school in our area. They are going totally screen-free for K-8. This is a highly regarded private school in a major Northeast city. It’s not a nature or Waldorf school or anything like that, just a regular prestigious private school.
Unfortunately the school will likely not be an option for us given price and location, but it was comforting that they are making the change. I’m hopeful that as private schools start turning the tide, public schools will follow.
Our public school district recently went from 1:1 device in K-2 to 2:1. A neighboring school district ended use of iReady for math. Another local district has made headlines recently because hundreds of parents have signed a petition for tech opt-out (unsuccessful so far but the school district has come across very poorly in this public battle). Small changes but hopefully just the start.
This looks FUN! We have some birthday parties coming up and this would be a fun gift.
PS- I posted a few months ago about my daughter getting into field hockey in Pre-K. We decided to wait a year or two. However, my almost 2 year old son seems to LOVE playing with his plastic hockey sticks so I have a feeling lots of ice, roller or field hockey awaits me in the future haha!
How do you deal with the your kids’ friends having no screen restrictions whatsoever? These are people we’ve known for years, involved parents who seem well informed. I just don’t get it. I feel like I can’t ban my kid from playing with his best friends, but no you can’t go watch YouTube at your friend’s house all summer. Play basketball or go swimming. Is there any point in saying something to the parents or should we just find new friends? I feel very alone on this issue.
I have a 9 year old boy that’s about to go into 4th grade. He would like to have more friends over this summer but he says all his classmates want to do is play Roblox or watch YouTube ( which we don’t allow). What are activities that the tween boy crowd enjoys that I can suggest? We live in the city and they will go to the fields to play soccer and basketball, we’ve had success with nerf battles but they’ve sadly moved beyond the build a fort phase. It’s hot and humid here in the summer so I can sometimes take them to a pool but they can’t go on their own and I need some indoor ideas. Thank you!
I’m coaching a team of 7th grade girls. Half the team are very much teens, totally obsessed with boys and relationships and how they look. The other half skew younger, don’t understand the interests, and are just out to have fun. This difference is creating friction on the team. I need them all to get along and appreciate each other, though they don’t have to be besties. Of course all are incredibly sensitive and moody. Any suggestions for how to coach through this?