Grumpy, cagey, cabin-fevered children and a slightly irritable mom.
Enter 1 rice bucket:
This is the best $12 I have ever spent. We have our own indoor sandbox that has served me well on many of those rainy days. I'm shocked how into it each of the kids get. It started off as plain white rice, when that got a little boring they got to have all my kitchen utensils in it. When that novelty wore off I threw in a bunch of little farm animals they had to dig for, after another rainy week they opened the box to find "rainbow rice" -- I had used liquid watercolors from the craft store to color some rice and add it to the box. That was a huge hit. And the good thing about rice -- they WILL throw a third of it on the vinyl table cloth outside the box (which I simply dump back in) and they WILL throw another third of it that misses the cloth and goes all over the carpet -- but it easily vacuums up. And if you can't get to vacuuming it up for a couple days, no worries, you can't even see the stuff in the carpet (move over Play-doh!),
So for all you moms out there looking for a fresh rainy day idea that has now lasted me 3 years, here you go, $12 ($4 bucket and $8 rice). Actually, it ultimately cost $20 as Sadie in some uncontrolled fit of excitement holding a measuring cup of rice couldn't stop the urge to toss back and try to "drink" the rice, choked, gagged and vomited back in the rice bucket. Yes, that was a thrilling day for all the eager rice players that they still talk about two years later. So factor in the budget at least one replacement refill of rice. Rain on.