After enjoying a bout of unexpectedly cool weather for mid-June, the meteorologist of our area is now warning of the impending heat wave: triple digits as far as the eye can see, or at least as far as my forecast app shows me.

What can you possibly do with three kids when it’s brian-melting degrees outside? Well, lucky for you, I’ve compiled a list of tried and tested tricks that I’ve developed over the course of seven years, three kids, and countless summer days. Stay cool, my friends.

1. Swim. Duh.

If you can, jump in a pool. Stay in it all day, with the exception of bathroom and food breaks, of course. Honestly, having a pool makes 100 degree plus really manageable. I usually reserve our pool time for sometime after three, going into the hottest part of the day.

I turn my AC up to like 80 degrees, which seems nuts, but when you come in wet from the pool after a few hours of swimming, 80 degrees feels like the North Pole. Stay cool, and save money on your electric bill, win-win. ANd if you don’t have a pool, make a pool date with a friend or family member. We bought our house with a pool three years ago.

Before that, I would cart the kids around to friends and family that I planned on visiting anyways. I would just save those visits for really hot days. It works out. If all else fails, check your community for public pools or access to school pools.

2. Go to the gym.

This might seem counterproductive if your goal is to avoid getting hot and sweaty, but hear me out. If you’re a busy parent like me, you may not always get to exercise as much as you’d like.

When the weather is nice, it’s makes it easier to stay active outside with the kids. But days with extreme heat and/or bad air quality is not really conducive to outdoor activities. My gym has a gigantic and apparently fun play area for kids; they ask to go to the gym all the time. If I went every time they asked, I’d probably have a “summer body.”

Also, the price for an hour and a half of supervised “getting all of their energy out” time in the supervised play area is $4 for my 3 kids. Seriously, that is the cheapest babysitter/stress reliever you will ever find!

If we get enough hot days, I might be able to comfortably wear a bathing suit in public before the summer is over. Also, a lot of gyms have pools: two birds, one stone.

3. Go to the library.

I don’t know why, but libraries are usually freezing. The libraries in our city have summer reading challenges, fantastic kid areas, and they usually have some fun summer activities as well. I’m not just talking enthusiastic story times.

Last year, we caught an entire reptile show at the library where my kids were able to see all kinds of interesting reptiles and even held a few giant snakes in one of the library’s ice cold rooms.

Kids are entertained, everyone’s cool, and mom might even get to read quietly during the day: there is no downside.

4. Catch a movie.

Several of the theaters in our area have special $1 kid movies on certain weekdays. They’re usually older movies, but have you ever met a kid that won’t watch a movie, like, two thousand times? I have not. Once again, theaters are usually cold.

Throw the kids in the car, get the biggest popcorn (tickets were only $1 after all), and literally chill out for a few hours. You might even forget that eggs are frying on the sidewalks outside.

5. Play in the sprinklers.

Whether you have a pool or not, playing in the sprinklers for kids is still fun! In fact, if you add water balloons into the mix, it gets even better. Have a water balloon toss, or play water balloon baseball. Jump over sprinklers, play sprinkler tag.

Getting wet makes life so much better when it’s over 100 degrees outside. And running through sprinklers or launching a water balloon war will make you feel like a kid again. And we all need that sometimes.

6. Make your own popsicles/ice cream.

There are so many recipes for ice cream or DIY sherberts or simple fruit popsicles. For the most part, you don’t even need specialty machines or fancy molds.

The kids love picking out their own flavors and it’s a great snack to eat outside after running around in the sprinklers or swimming.

7. Break out the board games.

When I was young, my grandma taught me all kinds of different card games she learned growing up in the extreme cold winters of Wisconsin. We basically have the reverse of that here.

We rarely make time for actual board games when the weather is mild, and with the availability of so many electronic games, actual physical board games often get forgotten. If a hot day traps you inside for awhile, dust off the chess set, monopoly, or even a deck of cards.

Show kids the art of losing, because that’s something they don’t get on most computer/app games.

So clearly, there are a lot of things that you can do to make those hot summer days a lot less miserable. I didn’t include water parks or day trips to the beach, or the mountains because I wanted to stick to really simple, and budget friendly ideas.

Almost anyone can do all or most of the things on my list. And the best part is that these simple activities end up being so fun that you start looking forward to those hot days when summer rolls around.

I don’t know about you, but many of my favorite childhood memories took place in the same blistering weather of Central California summers.