oreo party

Let me preface this post by reminding anyone who may have forgotten that I am not the fun parent.  I am completely okay with this. In fact, I relish in it. But for the last few summers, Rocky has had to go back to Bangkok for a few weeks and I am left in charge of making sure my kids learn to love America by having a great summer experience. 

I've worried that going to my default parenting method of chores, time outs and lots of educational playing by yourself, might not be the best method to accomplish my end goal--feel a strong attachment to the country they don't live in and two of them weren't even born in. 

About midsummer after 3 trips to the ER, a lot of time denying candy at the checkout stand and forcing them to bed before the sun went down, I decided the try on a new hat, the fun parent hat. E requested an oreo party and instead of following my gut response--quiche for dinner and bedtime by 7:30--I said, why don't we make it an oreo-swimming party?

Yep, the fun hat fit. We went to the store and bought six different kids of oreos (sidenote:there are a lot of different flavors of oreos in America. In BKK there are a lot of different colors but they are all the same flavor, "ice cream" they're as bad has your imagining). We each tried the different flavors and after voted the chocolate dipped ones the best. Then we went for a swim. 

After a cool 15 minutes of swimming I was forced to evacuate the pool and clean up Eliot's vomit. I threw away my fun parent hat with the chunks I strained out with the pool net and put everyone to bed early. 

Your move, America.