Gathered Together: Shaving Cream 2020

We usually rent a bounce house/slide.

This year we decided against it simply because we didn’t feel comfortable with our ability to disinfect it in light of the COVID spread. Nevertheless, the kids made it clear that it wasn’t our summer gathering without a shaving cream fight. 

Lindsay was in charge of finding the shaving cream. We all crossed our fingers that the dollar store would not limit the number of cans she could buy and they didn’t. 

She bought fifteen cans.

The grandchildren used every single one and had the nerve to ask it there were any more. Maya walked around the lawn with a little plastic basket gathering up handfuls of white foam wherever she could find them.

Some kids checked out every discarded can just in case there was a dab left that could be squirted out by the application of extreme strength.

When the kids were little, we played around the big “shaving cream rock” but that tradition has been outgrown. These are big kids now and they need to run around the yard with their cans pointed at people in order to get their squeals out.

They tell me that shaving cream makes your skin soft.

At least the girls talk like that. 

Without being told,

I can tell you when the shaving cream has been opened

because the whole yard smells wonderful.

Here’s Maya with her basket of gathered blobs of shaving cream

from around the yard. 

Pretty hard to scratch your nose

when your hands are covered with cream.

It is tough to play with shaving cream when you wear glasses.

Both Henry and Andrew had to stop more than once to wash their glasses before they could run around again and attack their cousins.

Shaving cream in the eyes is unavoidable but the kids are getting older and better at remembering the consequences of being careless. They can also run to the hose to rinse out their own eyes.

One can of shaving cream from the dollar store can cover one, whole body. For the life of me I don’t understand the draw it has for these children. It seems so slimy and messy.  I’m just glad it wasn’t winter or raining because my house would have been a mess. 

Then again, kids like slimy and messy.

I have a million pictures

I’ll just end the adventure of the shaving cream with this wonderful photograph of Owen.

Mr. Good-Natured. Mr. Smile. Mr. Hugs. 

Plenty of laughter on this day !

Grandma