Family Fun & Kidtivities

I have nine nieces and nephews that I bring to my home every year for 2 weeks. Ages range from 4-20 and it's sometimes difficult to keep them occupied. I was surprised however at the things that they enjoyed. We've done the board games, Gattiland, movies and the usual staple things.

Have you tried laser tag? The older kids get more out of it, but we play a paired game where the older kids get paired with a younger one (so that they can actually win). There are also places here in Louisville, where we can go to batting cages, car racing (I can't remem the names--like go cars), video games on the inside.

We've also had Christmas in July (which we are changing to Giving in July) and we go to a dollar store, each kid has $10-$15 bucks to buy for the others, they wrap and give funny gifts or meaningful cards to one another.

Also try uploading photos to snapfish or some other site and create a book - you can put in your own comments - LOTS of fun and they can be so FUNNY - but you have to let them put what they want - within reason.

Also, we've staged plays and musicals (the boys don't seem to like that and other than laser tag, I'm not for guns).

The museum wasn't something I thought they'd enjoy, but we went to the Muhammad Ali Center and they wanted to go back! We also have the factory where we make the Louisville Slugger that we will probably do this year.

Do you have a skate park - it could be an outing, but fun to do.

And believe it or not, cooking has been fun (extremely messy, but fun) and even the boys got involved.

Oh, one last thing. One year, I made them a Coupon Book. I think I'm going to have them do this for one another this year. In my book I had things like You don't have to do the dishes tonight; $5.00 gift certificate; You get to be on the computer for an hour instead of 30 minutes (with 9 kids, I gotta control it somehow), and other things they like: You can have cookies for breakfast today....you know, stuff like that.

Sorry I didn't see your post until now. Have a good one.