Things to do on a really hot day

We upped the excitement these school holidays by having a very special guest: my 15-year-old sister from South Africa. K loves playing games with her; R says she just likes to 'follow her around and see what she does'. It's not so easy to find activities that are appropriate and entertaining for ages 4-15, even more so when the weather is blisteringly hot. But since you can't play Mario Karts and watch movies all day (Superman was well received by all three viewers, although I'm pretty sure the youngest had no idea what was going on), here are some of the things we did in-between eating icy-poles:

Drawings in the style of Ed Emberley (we used Ed Emberley's Book of Faces). The two older ones copied them straight from the book; R asked me to draw circles, onto which she drew faces and bodies. We all had great fun doing these.

A waterfight using water pistols hastily purchased from a two dollar shop. Closely followed by...

A water balloon fight on the back deck, in which we parents scored quite a few hits. I was unable to photograph this, for obvious reasons. In fact, just stepping outside the back door was quite risky this afternoon. 

Eating all the sweets in the house - the leftovers from Halloween, Christmas and various party bags. They had been put away high up in a cupboard and I was sick of being asked when can we eat the sweets? So I told the kids they could eat as much as they liked after dinner, then throw out whatever was left over. Sticky, disgusting, ugh. But at least they're gone now - although I think K may still have a few stashed away somewhere, the sneaky little thing.

An evening walk around the neighbourhood at 8.30pm, when the temperature was a mere 38 degrees (down from 41 earlier in the day). The streets were so deserted, we pretended we were the only people alive on earth.

As I write this it's 10.41pm and it's still very hot - 36 degrees (that's just short of 97 degrees, for those of you who speak fahrenheit). My daughter, in her usual weird way, has insisted on taking a heat pack to bed. I have a fan on here in the kids' bedroom, but it's barely making a difference. In quarter of an hour there is a cool change coming, so hopefully we'll soon be flinging open the windows and doors. More hot days are forecast for next week, which means more icy poles, more water fights -  and Superman II.