Spring Break 2012 (summer weather!)

The highs for the days during spring break were in the 80s!  Every day.  So of course, that meant, LOTS of outdoor play.  The time change gave us more sunlight in the mornings.  Violet (and I) enjoyed not getting up early to get her to school.  Most mornings Calvin got up first at 7 am, and the rest of us by 7:45-8:00 am.  I wasn't mentally prepared for so much outside time.  They spent a lot of time playing with our neighbor, Kinzie, who is also 6 yrs old.  She drives around a truck, our kids drive around their green car, they switched cars a lot, swung on the swing sets, played in the mud (from the fallen pine tree), jumped around the gazebo, re-arranged rocks, watered flowers, played with water, and rode scooters.  Vanessa wanted desperately to join the older kids outside, which I let her do occasionally.  She loves being outside like the others!  The kids got almost daily baths from being so filthy, and were exhausted by the end of each day.  Dave was supposed to travel for work to American Samoa (an island near New Zealand) but his trip was transferred to another Calix employee.  So, both of us were thankful he did not have to go there. 

Thursday of Spring Break my mom came down and we went to the IA City Children's Museum at the Coralville Mall.  It was a very fun packed day!  We got there around 11 am, spent an hour or so in the mini-shopping mall, the kids made (fake) pizzas and served us lunch, they changed costumes a bunch of times and danced around a kid theater, then we got lunch at Panera.  Violet and Calvin got a chance to try out ice skating in the arena in the mall.  My mom got on skates and took them on the ice.  I think they spent more time on their bottoms than on their skates. :)  It was an adventure.  Violet doesn't give up easily, she is one determined kiddo.  She went out on the ice a second time by herself and only fell a couple times, but managed to scoot around a bit on the ice.

We headed back to the museum and explored the airplane exhibit, the kids spent a lot of time making their own stomp rockets out of paper, going down the slide from the 2nd to the 1st floor, sitting in airplanes, hot air balloons, and blasting air out of the air gun.  We sat down for story time, drew some pictures, explored the train room, played in the room for younger toddlers (where Vanessa could run around), and built things in the Lego room.  Never-ending things to do there!  There were a few rooms we didn't even get a chance to go into.  I could tell Calvin was getting tired from the sudden outbursts of crying and anger for reasons that usually wouldn't have gotten him so upset.

After beef sandwiches from Arby's and a ride on the carousel, we decided it was time to go home.

The kids watched Pinocchio on the way home in the van. Vanessa took a nap.  Daddy misses us but got a ton of work done.  It was a wonderful day!

They saw the ice arena when we first walked into the mall and admired the skaters for awhile.

Making change with Grandma Jo at the cash register.  Calvin stood there forever and concentrated on pushing buttons.

Violet constructing her perfect pizza in major concentration:

Dress up

Trying out the ice skates:

 Vanessa and Grandma Jo

Vanessa running around in the toddler play area:

Train world

To the air control tower (aka: top of the slide)"