Homemade Snocones and Water Balloon Fight

Whenever we see Snocones, the kids always beg for them. I have a hard time spending $5 on ice and sugar water so I always say no but they beg and beg. We experimented a little and made the best Snocones at home. We used our Vitamix to blend the ice to snocone texture. I filled the blender with ice and then filled it up half way with water. I then blended it for about 10 seconds and it was perfect. I am not sure how other blenders work. I am sure they can be used but the length of time might differ. To flavor it, there are a couple of different options. You need to use a concentrated amount of drink mix. To make it healthier, you can use sugar free but there are still tons of dies in them and artifical sweetners. My take on making this healthy was to use RW knudson 100% juice. The juice is very strong and in my opinion needs to be diluted so it goes well with the snocone ice. Other ideas would be to freeze juice into ice cubes and then just blend those ice cubes into the snocone ice. It was a hit at our family and very refreshing.
A fun family activity is a water balloon fight. I love water balloon fights but it is a pain to fill all the water balloons up and they disappear so fast!  We fill up a bunch at once and put them in the inflatable pool. Everybody gets one and then runs away at a blastoff count from 10 down. Then everyone is fair game. And the balloons are first come first serve from here on out. At the end of the fight, it always feel worth all the time and headache to fill them up. I personally love to see the different personalities of the kids come out with their strategies of play!