Rainy Days

As many of you know, we live in the Pacific Northwest. What does that mean? Beautiful summers and rainy everything else. The summers are great because the kids live outside, we can go hiking, camping, and go swimming. You really just need to go inside your house to get food, then back outside you go. The rainy season is quickly approaching. We're having a few rainy days here and there, but pretty soon it just won't stop. I'm also 30 weeks pregnant. Add both of those up and TV here we come. TV is the easy answer so I can rest of get my stuff done in the house. Instead I'm challenging myself to keep the TV off until after nap time, then they can watch a small amount. Now, I need to start getting creative for our rainy day activities. Our society is so quick to push technology on kids. Rainy day? Let them play on the iPad. My husband and I always argue over this, but I think that technology can kill a kid's imagination if your not careful. Yes, there are great educational games for kids that I think are great. In fact, we have an iPad just for our kids that is full of them. It's usually used for traveling, but they definitely see it through out the week.However, the problem with technology, like everything else, is the lack of parental involvement. As our kids get older, we tell them they can watch TV, play a video game, or text/call friends. How long do you let them do this? There are families that have the TV on for the entire day, let their kids play 12 hours straight of video games, or hold their phones in front of their face for the majority of the day. We've all been guilty of one of those at some point. What happened to our kids going outside to fight dragons?Building forts?Turning bedrooms into fantasy lands?I have so many memories with my brother playing outside until the last few seconds of the day. Running home when it started to get dark so we didn't get in trouble. Joel has the same memories. He would be playing outside with his cousins until the street lights came on and then they'd race home. Being inside felt restrictive and kids just wanted to play outside.Now, we have to fight our kids to play outside or in their rooms. This is why we're making the decision to limit the technology in our house. There will be seasons that we allow more. I'm assuming that will be the first few weeks of life with a newborn. There will be seasons with little to none. There will also be seasons where we find a happy medium. So how will we fill our time in the rainy days?1. Turning our sandbox into a sensory box, filling it with beans, toys, and moving it into their bedroom. 2. Art projects. (These are my favorite!)3. Teach my kids to build forts. (Hopefully daddy will help with this because my forts tend to be a blanket over the table.)4. Turning my boys into my baking assistants. 5. Playing in the rain. (I guess they won't melt.)6. Puzzles (These are Liam's new favorite thing to do!)7. Reading books.8. New toys. (I'm organizing the boys toys into tubs. This way I can stash some on the closet and switch out tubs periodically. This helps make their old toys novel instead of having to buy new toys all the time!)What do you and your family do on rainy days? If you don't have kids, what did you do as a kid on rainy days?