I have learned that the day to play with shaving cream is the day that we rent the waterslide. I know that every grandmother who might be reading this post is swearing that I am an idiot to ever think of arming a bunch of kids with cans of shaving cream and then turning them lose in my yard.
On the surface, I do agree, but my yard is big and my yard is wide and I have multiple hoses hooked up to wash things and people off and besides, shaving cream adds about 50 miles per hour to the central slide of the Ultra Croc Water Park.
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Shaving Cream at Wal-Mart is only 88 cents a can, which is cheaper than the dollar store if you are doing the math. Any way you look at it, it is safe and cheap and harmless to the yard and makes gaggles of kids smell wonderful.
Kids won’t waste any on grown-ups so you don’t have to worry about being ambushed because children become very possessive of their allotted amount and sometimes steal little gobs off of the backs of their siblings and cousins.
When they think that their personal can has run out they run around the yard picking up other people’s discarded cans in the hope that they can squeeze out one last drop.
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Just before dinner on the day of the Water Slide I yell “Shaving Cream” which echoes through the house and yard until ALL of the kids are right in front of my chair. They come running faster than you would ever imagine they could. It is a heightened contrast to what happens when their mothers call “dinner” on a school night and they are sneaking in a program of Sponge Bob Square Pants without the sound turned up.
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Four seems to be the age where a child can keep shaving cream out of his or her eyes. Littler kids like trying to squirt the cream on someone else while older kids won’t waste a gob.
I really don’t know how we got through the whole game without shaving cream in someone’s eyes . . . but we did.
We did, however, have tears. Tears came when a gob of cream was stolen off of someone’s back but most of the parents told their kids to just quit crying or if they couldn’t then they should quit playing the game. When parents added the phrase “why don’t you give your can to someone else if you don’twant it?” the play resumed and the whining ceased.
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Behind this tangle of kids is the HUGE WATERSLIDE. It is a yearly promise we make to our younger grandchildren for our gathering and one that the kids remind us of during the year. Since we have to wash it off anyway before returning it to Plan-It-Rentals, we wait until before dinner and the end of the day to break out the shaving cream.
If you have never tried to climb up the middle slide, covered with shaving cream, you have never faced a challenge. The slide becomes the fastest, slickest and most competitive “King of the Hill” game that you have ever seen. Bodies who go up the back way or make it to the top come flying down the slide before they can catch a breath.
Sometimes they come down in clumps of bodies. Then, they laugh and try it again.
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After all of the shaving cream is gone and every can has been tapped and turned upside down and finally flung into the garbage, there is “the shower”. Nice, medium cool water comes from the “drinking hose” which is the one that is connected to the house, versus those that are connected somewhere out in the yard or garden. All of the kids and grown-ups know the difference.
This year the kids are highly motivated to enter the shower because do you know what is going to happen after dinner ? The question is answered on the post titled
Shaving cream is for sure one of my favorites!!