Spring Break

For the third year in a row, our spring break began with a snow storm. It snowed for three days straight. Luckily it was warm enough that it didn’t really pile up, but we had a few inches on the lawn all weekend. The bright side of the snow is that all of the kids’ soccer games were cancelled and none of them had practice Thursday night. It was sweet to skip those commitments for the week.

We didn’t make any big plans, but we kept ourselves busy with some lazy fun at home. It was a much needed break from our typical schedule. Here’s a list of what we did (in no particular order):

The kids had two slumber parties in “Grandma’s room.” They watched Megamind the first night and UP the second night.

Friday was our turn to host a late night with the Jensens. We used up the leftover supplies from Elise’s class party and let the kids each make a couple of donut lambs and an egg head. They played and watched Megamind again and made some perler bead projects.



The kids and I watched Bill Cosby Himself and The Princess Bride on the days Nate had to work and we watched The Ten Commandments as a family on Sunday. I was surprised by how much the kids loved “the Moses movie.”

We played a few board games . . . Quirkle, Sorry, Trouble (or as Nate calls it “Boredom”), and Sequence. The kids also spent some time playing Guardian Rock on the computer.

We used a Restaurant.com gift certificate to go to CJ’s for dinner. The food wasn’t great, but we had fun going out. We took turns playing Labyrinth on Nate’s phone while we waited for our food. Nate was dumb and kept beating my high score.

The kids got in lots of reading minutes. Emily read for more than six hours over the weekend.

Ben and Elise shared a huge bag of pretzels on Saturday. We never have pretzels in this house because the kids always say they don’t like them. We had almost a full bag leftover from the lamb treats and the two of them couldn’t stop eating them. Ben kept coming in and saying “I need some water. These pretzels are making me thirsty.” It reminded me of Kramer, so I showed the kids the Seinfeld clips on YouTube. For the next two hours they walked around saying “These pretzels are making me thirsty” in every possible intonation. It cracked me up.

Nate entertained the kids by using his hot chocolate to steam up his glasses. I love that they are so easily amused.

I did a little shopping and Nate and I spent some time cleaning up. During the cleaning, I discovered that Abby fell out of the trailer when the kids had their slumber party last fall. For the last few months, whenever I’d mention the trailer or camping Abby would say, “Remember when we slept in the trailer and I fell out the window?” I would say “You did not fall out the window. Stop making up stories.” Abby would say, “Yes I did.” And I would roll my eyes and say, “Go play.” Same conversation every time. Turns out she wasn’t making up stories. Saturday I was cleaning out some of the stuff that we took out of the trailer, and she told me again that she had fallen out the window. I told Nate so he could get a laugh out of it too. Instead, he said “well, actually . . . she did fall out the window.” The night they slept out there, we hadn’t finished putting up one of the canvas panels and it left a little gap that Abby fell out of (three foot drop onto concrete). Emily came in and woke up Nate because Abby was crying. He went out and she was lying on the cement crying because she was cold. I slept through the whole thing and Nate neglected to tell me about it for the last five months. He defended himself with, “You never asked” and something about me being a worrier. I guess I should have more faith in Abby that she is telling the truth and less faith that Nate is.

We worked on pinewood derby cars.

I blogged.

Nate and I watched Glory. I’ve never seen it the whole way through. I loved it and hated it.

Abby come home devastated from church because they didn’t sing happy birthday to her in Primary. Apparently that is a big deal when you are four.

Monday it warmed up enough for the kids to play outside. They played in the snow (in totally inappropriate clothing) until it melted and had a picnic on the trampoline for lunch.




Here’s what we didn’t do (except for once on Sunday):

Practice piano. Comb the girls’ hair. Make good food.

That was our spring break. Nothing too exciting, but we’re okay with that. It was nice to have some time together without any outside obligations. We like each other (most of the time).