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104 days of summer vacation???

Where exactly do Phineas and Ferb live that they get 104 days of summer vacation?According to my calculations, we get 68. Sixty eight days for the kids to spend building a rocket, fighting a mummy, finding a dodo bird and giving a monkey a shower. Sounds good, right? It does sound good.

But what will actually happen is that they will watch someone do that stuff on TV, play a lot of video games, bicker, complain about any family activity we plan and pester us for things we do not want to give them. All of a sudden 68 days of summer vacation seems like a long time, let alone 104.

I am not blaming my kids. They are trying to entertain themselves the best they can. I am not blaming myself either, because, I, too, am trying to entertain them the best I can. The problem is that entertainment is the short con. What I’m looking for is the long con, the hook, line and sinker. Week after week of excitement and anticipation, a full-on takeover of the imagination, an experience that gets them jumping up and down outside the mailbox, scouring the globe and calling up the grand-parents to ask about their great pirate ancestors. What I’m looking for is a Mail Order Mystery.

Unfortunately for me, my kids know everything there is to know about Mail Order Mystery. But yours don’t. You’ve got  68 days of summer vacation ahead, maybe even 104. Make them extraordinary.