Spring Break 2013

Last week was spring break.

 

And miracle of miracles, for the first time EVER Josh's spring break matched up with the kid's spring break.  It was pretty awesome. 

 

And despite having Josh work his 2nd job three nights we were able to do lots of fun family things and we had a wonderful week.

 

First of all, the weather for much of the week was lovely.  The kids were thrilled to be able to wear shorts a couple of days and even sported their new Easter flip flops for much of the week.  We took several walks and spent some time playing at parks and that was really great.

 

Some of our funnest moments came as we used our pass of all passes.  I bought passes for the family for Christmas and it has been one of the best purchases I've ever made.  We LOOOOVE these.  (You can find all kinds of awesome deals for them.  We bought ours for $20 a person from CityDeals but my sister in law recently bought some for $30 a piece and also got a $20 Walmart gift card for each pass as well so look around.) 

 

Earlier in the year we attended a couple of hockey games and had a total blast (Gavin was thrilled to see himself dancing on the Jumbotron). 

 

But this week we opted for some more hands on adventures.

 

Early in the week we headed to Planet Play.  The kids had a lot of fun playing glow in the dark mini golf, laser tag, miniature bowling and driving go carts.  Ellie's favorite part was playing on the jungle gym and slide.  We had a great afternoon.

Josh all dashing as James Dean.

 

In the middle of the week Parker lost his two front teeth.  We told him he should have waited for Christmas, but he didn't want to.  It's fun to hear him whistle when he talks.  What a cutie. (No pass of all passes required for this bit of fun.)

 

Later in the week we packed everyone up and set out for Hollywood Connection.  Again, our pass of all passes let us in for a bit of fun (although it is only for the month of April that Hollywood Connection is included). 

 

We headed for roller skating first.  When I was growing up skating was one of my favorite things to do.  I loved to strap on a pair of skates and zip around my neighborhood.  So, for me, it is thrilling to spend some time in the skating rink. 



My littles all saddled up for skating.

 

For Josh, that is not quite true.  There is no love lost between him and skating.  However, he is a good sport and he loves me so he laced up his skates and tottered around the rink anyway.  He did spend most of his time with Ellie so he wasn't too put upon. 

Ellie getting her skate on.

 

The other kids had a great time.  Bryce even won the rink wide limbo contest.  Yeah, he rocks like that.

 

Notice the vague look of trepidation on Josh's face.  This is me skating past him because he refused to hold my hand while we skated so that he wouldn't accidentally drag me to the ground with him.

After skating, we played a round of mini golf.  It would have been very pleasant if there hadn't been the RUDEST family behind us who constantly started playing before we were even off the hole and who only spoke Portuguese (where's my Portuguese speaking brother then I need him) so they just kept saying "It's ok, it's ok" every time we tried to speak to them about it.  We did eventually just tell them to go ahead of us only to find a set of rude teenagers behind us who did exactly the same thing (at least we could chew them out in English).  It was not the most pleasant round of golf I have ever played.

 

 

We rode rides for the rest of the evening and the kids had a fabulous time.  Again, Ellie's favorite part was the jungle gym and slide.  She's pretty easy to please.  It was a lot of fun.

Logan and Gavin insisted on riding in their own car on this one and then
were terrified and buried their heads in their hands for most of the ride. 
Poor sweethearts.

G all ready to tear it up in bumper cars.

 

But not all the fun was had in activity centers.  Josh bought me a tree.

 

I do love trees.

 

This spot has been pretty empty since the tree we had in this spot was split in a snowstorm a couple years ago.  I've wanted to put something new in since then and Josh bought me this lovely serpentine weeping cherry tree (oh, he's so romantic) which the boys helped me install in the yard.  I LOOOVE it!  We still need to name him (the tree I mean), but I'm sure something will come to us.

 

The kids had some fun on their own as well.  Bryce and Aubrey went swimming with some friends from school, Parker attended his first sleep over, and we had a couple of birthday parties.

 

One party was for a friend of Aubrey's.  We had a hard time picking a present for an 11 year old boy who has everything so we went with cash.  But to make it memorable we froze it into a hunk of ice so he would have to work to get at it.  It was a pretty big hit at the party.  So much fun.

 

 

Then to top it all off, we were able to watch general conference on Saturday and Sunday.  I always hearing teachings of living prophets and the kids were amazing.  They tuned their radios to conference all on their own and voluntarily listened while coloring conference activity packets. 

 

We had such a great week.  I think I could take another spring break sometime very soon.  Good thing it's only 9 weeks until summer vacation.  Oh the fun we will have! 

 

(Of course I imagine by the end of the summer I will be very ready to ship the kidlets back to school during the day.  Or maybe not...I guess we'll see.)

 

It was wonderful to spend a whole week, all day, every day with my little family.