We planned to go to the school pancake breakfast and book fair,
but we ate a tasty breakfast first and then Noah read for most of the drive (he's much more of a reader than a talker) and then they didn't have the book we were hoping to get at the book fair, so we ended up at Target where he bought the other book he really wanted and then we headed home and he was right in observing that it wasn't much of a date after all and that we should probably do a re-do, but I was still really happy to spend some one-on-one time with my best little buddy who for some reason is just growing and growing and growing up!
Emma came down with some kind of head cold sickness the day school let out for spring break, and it has slowly made it's way around to all of the kids. Adam has had the worst of it, and we have all be very impressed by his decongesting ritual.
Even though it's no fun being sick, I always enjoy having my babies around during the school days. And since they aren't allowed to do much more than rest and read, they're usually happy to go back to school as soon as their health affords it.
Day 5- Monday was a stay at home day. Emma wasn't feeling great, there was lots of snow on the ground, and we were all quite content to just be home creating and relaxing.
We got a delivery and the kids pounced on the boxes. They created a dog mansion for Laney and made a movie about it!
Day 6- Tuesday was our next big outing. Originally I told all of the kids that they could plan a day trip adventure, but they almost all landed on the same fun idea- breakfast at Chick-fil-a and a day of running, jumping, and climbing and Urban Air.
Check and check!
Day 7- Wednesday was friend day! Karlee and Mason and Jack came over, along with Henry, a new friend from church. We weren't quite sure who he would most enjoy playing with, and it turned out he had fun with all of us! Emma and Henry made everyone pretzels, the boys had an epic laser tag war, and everyone enjoyed being outside on the zipline on this warmest day of the break.
Day 8- Thursday was shaped by Emma's trip to the doctor to figure out what was going on with her ears. We had about 45 minutes to kill before meeting Daddy for lunch, so we went to the 'dead mall'. Noah could not figure out why there were so few stores of interest in this mall, but it was perfect for walking around while it was raining/snowing outside.
Ha- we were way too excited about this little Easter display.
Then off to lunch we went! I had wanted to go to the Brazilian churrasco for my family birthday meal, and it was delicious! It didn't send us all shooting back to Brazil like I hoped it would, but the limonade and pao de queijo and rice and beans and steaks were all fantastic. And now we can say that we've been to an American Brazilian churrasco. Yum!
More snow. What a silly spring break.
We randomly decided to watch Back to the Future this night, and we all liked it enough that we watched the whole trilogy over the break. Our kids finally know what 1.21 gigawatts means! You could definitely say this spring break was a success. :)
Day 9- Friday was another exciting day- St. Patrick's Day! These funny kids happened to line up on the stairs before starting their search for Lucky Charms and Rolos.
They spent a good chunk of the day playing laser obstacle course and parkour.
Bingo!
We spotted tiny leprechaun footprints leading right out the sunroom door.
Of course, Laney wasn't quite sure what all the fuss was about but she was happy to try woofing at something!
Green? Check!
Toward the end of the week I was starting to feel the itch to just pack up and go somewhere- anywhere!- before spring break was over, but there really aren't that many options within a day's trip that we haven't explored before. Especially not many options that weren't even colder, snowier or busier than home! But I did discover a DSM treasure that we've never checked out before, and Friday was the day to do it- the Governor's Mansion- Terrace Hill.
It was super cold again this day, but we enjoyed taking a quick trip into another world at this beautiful house on the hill in Des Moines.
Places like this remind me of the incredible blessing that the temple is- most people never get to see such beautiful artwork, stained glass and chandeliers on a regular basis, but they are in every temple around the world!
After our tour we hit up Chick-fil-a again- with gift cards, freebies and rewards we ended up with 3 chicken sandwiches, 16 chicken nuggets and 6 oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for a total of 55 cents. I love a good deal like that!
Emma got to play with her friend Cora that afternoon while the rest of us relaxed at home and prepared dinner- corned beef and cabbage of course! And that night we watched part two of the Back to the Future trilogy- 2015 doesn't look quite like they thought it might.
Saturday- the girls and I went to a baby shower, Adam interviewed his grandparents, and we wrapped up the Back to the Future trilogy. It was a fantastically lazy day.
Sunday- another happy day at church, an epic couple of rounds of Spoons, and a whole lot of grumping about going to bed early and nerves about going back to school the next day. This spring break, like any break from the routine of our every day lives, has been a great one!
Thoughts on staying home- it wasn't horrible. ;) If anything, it was a great reminder that our happiness has much less to do with where we are and more to do with who we are lucky enough to spend our time with and how we choose to spend that time together. I read once that rather than constantly dreaming about and working toward our next vacation, we should work to craft a contented life that we aren't constantly trying to escape. That can be hard to do when we're 'stuck' in the middle of the country in the middle of a winter that has been going on fooooooorever, but I think that generally speaking, we have created a great life that we are all happy to be living together. And now we are going to be just that much more ready and excited and grateful for our next adventure!
After we got home from our last trip of 2022, we all agreed that we were ready to stay home for at least six months. We set our sights on another epic road trip for spring break 2023, this time to North and South Carolina to visit some of our favorite friends who have recently moved, with stops in Indiana, the Appalachian Trail, Mammoth Cave, Discovery Arch and the St. Louis City Museum along the way. It was going to be epic indeed. We know nothing if not how to maximize trips, sometimes to the point of our own exhaustion.
But when we started making real plans for the trip sometime mid-January, despite wanting desperately to get out from under the endless gray of another Iowa winter, the excitement of the adventure was overshadowed by our still very real travel fatigue from 2022. Did we really want to plan, prepare, pack, and pay for another round of miles, hotels, activities, meals out and potential car problems (I might have PTSD from Marshmallow's unexpected breakdown last summer)? After lots of conversations and iterations of the trip and reality checks about our true desires, we opted to stay home for spring break 2023.
So here we are! I tried to keep a daily log of our spring break, which lasted for about 4 days before I happily avoided the computer for as much as possible during the week with my babies at home. While it still feels like an absolute opportunity lost by not going! and doing! during this week, everyone in our family has expressed contentment about staying home and relief about not undertaking such an epic road trip for our break this year.
Day 1- Thursday- It's the last day of school and we are all thrilled to finally be on the cusp of a break from school! There is a snow storm coming down fast and furious today, and while it's not cold enough to stick to the roads much, I'm relieved that we don't have to worry about where this storm is heading or how long it will take us to get to what would have been our first stop of the trip- the Baileys in Indiana. I really wish we were catching up with them, playing games and laughing and eating good food together while our kids get reacquainted, but I'm also thrilled that we actually got to celebrate my birthday tonight and everyone is giddy with the thought of sleeping in their own beds and not setting alarms for tomorrow.
Day 2- Friday- We went to Kansas City today! This was the one planned day trip of the break, and we ended up going this day because it's the last day the KC temple is open this month. Everyone was happy to sleep in and we were on the road around 10. First to the temple to do baptisms,
then to Fritz's downtown for lunch- somehow we ended up on the wrong side of the Missouri River on the Kansas side of the city and immediately rejected the idea of eating at the questionable looking and possibly abandoned Fritz's that closed at 3 PM, probably because it was in such a rough side of town. Instead we headed to Crown Plaza and were immediately flooded with memories of a trip we took here years ago. These silly kids were delighted to done their engineer caps for a picture!
Is there anything more exciting than ordering your own food over the phone?
Yes there sure is- watching it get delivered to your table via the cutest little train!
Crown Plaza was hopping with spring breakers, and we considered buying tickets to the Legoland Discovery Center but it was closing for the day by the time we finished up at Fritz's. But we had a great time in the Lego shop and Jason pointed out that this would have been everyone's favorite part of Legoland anyway! Our kids are quite possibly all too big to really enjoy what Legoland Discovery Center has to offer anymore. Happy memories sometimes forget how little we were when memories were made- here's a quick reminder that we were all quite a bit younger at our last visit to this Legoland Discovery Center in 2015-
Oh my goodness those were happy, busy, fun days. These days are too, just in different ways.
Our last stop in Missouri was at Liberty Jail.
The kids haven't been here for 8 years, which is a bit silly considering how close we live to it. But perhaps visiting such a somber church history site so infrequently helps us maintains its significance.
The senior sister missionary giving us the tour asked Adam and Noah to lay down on the stone floor and consider how comfortable that would have been for four months in a Midwest winter.
It was a sweet stop on our way back home, and another great check in our family church history tour.
I spent this day trying not to think of how wonderful it would have been to pull into the Tolbert's house in North Carolina tonight. The visit with them would have made the entire 42 hour road trip so worth it, but everyone was happy to be chilling in the car for just a few hours instead of a few days, watching Shrek 2 and reading good books and getting Emma ahead on the 67 talk challenge and then sleeping in our own beds. Emma especially would have been delighted to spend the night in a hotel in KC, but we had to head back home- our pup was waiting for us! And Emma spent the bulk of spring break feeling just under the weather and eventually going to the doctor for a confirmation of double ear infections and a round of antibiotics. There were several days on this trip that someone in our family expressed gratitude for not being away from home.
Day 3- Saturday- skiing with Adam!
We almost went on our annual date on a sunny but super windy Saturday in February, but decided instead to hedge our bets for this day. The slopes close for the season the next day and we had such a good time! We didn't arrive super early but still got in 12 runs before we stopped for lunch.
This picture from one of our early runs showed high visibility and clear runs! And the crowds were low enough that we never waited more than a minute to hop back onto the chairlift. And while Adam was hoping for an epic wipeout in which his skis, poles, and self went flying, neither of us fell down mid-run but we did both randomly and gently fall over from the standing position at the top of the hill on the same run. The snow was mushy and slushy in the morning and we both got stuck.
We knew it was supposed to snow in the afternoon but boy it started coming down like crazy while we were warming up with lunch.
The trail lights came on, the snow was heavy and wet and piling up fast on the road and visibility on the slopes was painfully low and the snow was painfully icy and after another half dozen or so runs, we had to call it quits and get on the road- the trip that took us one hour on the way there took us two hours and lots of prayers on the way home. There were several accidents along our route and we were so happy when we finally pulled into our garage. But still, it was an awesome date with my best ski buddy and a funny way to spend 'spring break' (or as we often call it here, Winter Break 2.0).
Day 4- Sunday- Daylight Savings during spring break is the best! We never really make the adjustment until we absolutely have to, which is nice because it's a brutal one. At least half of our congregation was gone today, and we were able to step in with providing the sacrament meeting music (I opted to play the piano this time rather than panic about getting all of the stops right on the organ), saying the opening prayer, subbing for the Primary pianist, Adam taught the lesson for all of the Young Men, and we had a successful choir practice after church. That night we had a new family over for dinner and the kids helped me finish up my lovely birthday Lego flowers Sunday evening.
We've been enjoying their bright colors and an exception to the usual 'no toys at the table' rule ever since!
And always plenty of Legos- the boys designed a 4-in-1 Star Wars model.
These two partners in crime lobbied to stay home from school
and pulled out all of the Little People for an afternoon of reminiscent fun.
Spring is slowly but surely coming- we're enjoying the sunroom every chance we get,
including one warmish night when we watched Napoleon Dynamite!
Leah has been chipping away at her Silver Cord hours, and one afternoon that meant Emma and I got to hang out at the mall while she was there volunteering at the children's museum.
Afterward we checked out the prom dresses. These two are the best of friends and are always laughing together!
