Dinner!!

We live right next to a park, with a soccer/football field nearest our house and the play structure on the other side of the field.  The park abuts the school, with a kindergarten playground (closer) and the "big-kid" playground farther away.  There are basketball courts and four-square courts and hopscotch and even tetherball poles.  (I think we'll buy a tetherball and cord.  I have many fond memories of tetherball, both at home and at school.)

Now that the weather is warming--and hooray for spring, even a fitful, tentative Utah one--my kids are really starting to take advantage of our location.  Even Hebs, at four-and-a-half, is allowed to go out (with Em or Zee) and play at any part of the park/school grounds.  And I love it.  It gets them out of the house, it gets them away from the TV/computer/Xbox, and it tires them out.  Win-win-win.

But I don't love trudging across the fields to gather them in for dinner or bed.  So I'm totally going to buy a dinner bell.  A good, loud one that can be heard across the fields and playgrounds.  I'm so excited.

I'm trying to decide between a handheld one, like this:

Or a mounted one, like this:

Both have pros and cons.  I can control the use of the handheld one better than the mounted one--I just have to make sure I have a good high location for it.  And I can walk to the edge of our property and ring it, to get that much more coverage.

But the mounted one will always be available--I could just walk out onto the porch and ring-ring-ring!  And it won't clutter up my cabinets, and I won't have to remember to put it away.  But the kids could--would--play with it, at least until I yell at them a few times to STOP IT NOW.  And the wind might ring it, as well.

So I don't know.  The handheld one is cheaper, with Prime shipping on top of that.  The mounted one is slightly more expensive, has shipping costs, and extra time for shipping as well.  And I'd actually have to mount it on my pretty stucco.

Decisions, decisions...these are good ones to have.  I can't complain.