What boys do when the rain won't stop.

October was wet. Very wet. Rainfall records were broken and opportunities for fun outside were seriously down on what Eli and I had hoped for (and are used to). Not to be deterred (and because necessity is the mother of invention), we looked for new ways to entertain ourselves.

On one particularly wet and miserable Saturday, we started playing with some of Eli's matchbox cars and a track with a loop that he got last Christmas. Before long we were setting up car jump challenges for Eli's favourite blue car. The first challenge required his car to jump through a red diamond (a flaming ring of fire, whilst tempting, was deemed to contravene the saftey regulations that I've instituted for the living room). Eli was in charge of releasing the car at the top of the track, perched up on our couch and I was the vehicle retrieval crew/cinematographer positioned at the bottom of the jump zone.



Here are some shots of Eli's car mid-flight, with an expectant starter (Eli) perched on the couch watching the action unfold...



Not content with just one diamond, Eli soon pushed the envelope (and my skills as an engineer) as we advanced to even more daring jump challenges. This one pictured below, with a series of diamonds to negotiate, was not quite as easy and certainly more prone to accidents, which occassionally excited, but generally disappointed, Eli (like all 3.5 year olds, he loves to win and doesn't tolerate failures very well).



After some slightly teary disappointments (but spectacular crashes from my angle), Eli much prefered this softer option, whereby the car would fly through the red diamond before landing between the legs of one of his favourite soft toys...



Armed with some additional building materials, when then constructed a blue structure for the car to jump through (after making it through the red diamond). Eli liked this jump challenge a lot, both because of the colour and the vastly improved success rate (I think he reckons that I might just be cut out to become an engineer).



To finish off the session, we had a lights out spectacular, with the only light being Eli's torch, perched on top of the blue structure we'd made...not great video or photographic viewing (so I'm not posting it here), but it was pretty good fun.

After all of these engineering and death-defying stunts, it turned out that we'd spent the whole day inside and didn't go completely bonkers (which was certainly on the cards at the start of the day). I'll have to keep this sort of thing in mind (and swat up on my engineering) just in case this rain keeps falling...