[Lizavetta]

I suppose I am hopelessly behind the times. At the very least, I am hopelessly outnumbered by the parents around me who are busy filling out registration forms to plot out their kids' summers in exact degrees, minutes and seconds.

There, there, Valin....not to worry.

Some kids still have it pretty unstructured. My four will be riding dirt bikes, shooting guns and arrows (Dad-supervised), playing with their hot wheels in the dirt, making gravel cities in the dirt, swimming in the lake, hugging their chickens, re-enacting Harry Potter scenes with our old brooms, helping in the garden, going to the library, avoiding camps at all costs, camping out in the back of Dad's truck with sodas and glow-sticks, watching Kirk Douglas in "Ulysses" and Steve Reeves in "The Trojan Horse", playing with the dogs, their Legos, and each other, reading lots and lots and lots of books, and making batches of cookies now and then.

All the while reminding us how bored they are.

[Valin]

That's great! It does my heart good to know that some kids still get to be kids. We used to spend our summers playing (among others) Ulysses, and Voyage to the center of the earth. Not to mention baseball games that when on for weeks at a time.

[Dakmar]

Your kids have it made. I still enjoy a lot of those activities, especially hot-wheels stuff, and I'm pushing forty!

[Carolina]

...re-enacting Harry Potter scenes with our old brooms...

My kids have been acting out scenes from Monty Python's Holy Grail.

They discovered that banging measuring cups together makes a similar enough sound to knocking coconuts.

In between, they're playing Clue and Monopoly.

And making popsicles, laying on the family-size hammock swatting away flies and mosquitos looking at shapes in the clouds.

Then when their daddy gets home from work, off they go sailing.