Spring Break 2013

We started off Spring Break week with the kids trying to stay awake all night.  Calvin made it to 11pm, Violet made it closer to midnight.  Since they didn't have school, the kids had fun sleeping in many places throughout the house.  I remember being a kid setting up our sleeping bags in the basement and sleeping down there many nights, just loving the "newness" of the sleeping location.  Violet and Calvin ended up on their floor (on many layers of blankets) for a couple nights.  They shifted their "floor bed" to Vanessa's room a couple times.  Tonight they are sleeping in the basement.
I look back on the week and loved many things about it.
- No early mornings waking up Violet to get ready for school.
- No taking kids to and from school at all.  I loved "no schedule" and being able to sleep in and go places whenever.
- Calvin had a permanent play buddy with Violet home all week.
- Not working hard to get kids to bed early.
- No waking up kids from naps to get somewhere.
- Visiting Jay, Molly and Stella on Wednesday.  I made a daytrip to visit them for lunch at Wendy's then the kids played at the Play Station (big indoor park) while we talked.  Violet thinks adults are boring because all we do is "sit around and talk"...booorrrinnnggg in her mind.  Little does she know how relaxing it is!

So what did we do all week?  My first thought is "legos".

Something I did the Sunday before spring break week was take ALL. THE. TOYS. TO. THE. BASEMENT.  Everything.  Except for a box of baby stuff and some balls.  I tore down the kids play room with cardboard houses and moved them to the basement.  Every stray toy got chucked in a cardboard box and I drug it downstairs.  I got to the point that "putting toys away" meant throwing them in a huge heap in the cabinets and everything that didn't fit got shoved in some other random place.  I will admit I have no organization system for the toys and NO ENERGY to go through all them.  Too many little tiny toys with little tiny parts to go together, I do not have the ability to keep track of it all and keep things in the right places.  So...everything got mashed in probably 6 big cardboard boxes and other plastic bins and relegated to the walls in the basement.  I vacuumed the entire main floor.

So I mention legos because that is the one toy I left upstairs.  All the legos are spread on the dining room table and its the toy that Violet and Calvin have migrated to for hours daily.  They know how to follow the instruction books to make things like tractors, houses, little animals, etc.  They also got a larger square building base for Christmas as well as newer legos.  Violet created a huge "duck house" that she keeps her little lego ducks in.  She also created a little farm on the building base and Calvin drives his tractor and trailer across the table to a pile of yellow lego pieces they've deemed as "hay".  So they feed all the farm animals.  They invent all sorts of scenarios to play legos with.  "You pretend I'm xxxx and I'll pretend I'm xxxx" and so on and so forth.  I love listening to their creativity!  They build ramps, buildings, "overhangs", driveways, parking lots, rockets, blast off towers for the rockets, airplanes, etc.

I do have to constantly remind them to pick up legos that fall on the ground so Eli doesn't pick them up and swallow them.  Calvin is extremely keen on Eli's whereabouts, and if he sees Eli coming near, he'll quickly scower his playing area and pick up stray pieces.  He's even fished out pieces from Eli's mouth.

So this week they played with legos, for sure.  They did some pinwheel crafts with me to help decorate for my "spring fever" bunco party on Tues night.  Violet made a blank scrap book for her to draw in.  She practiced piano and did 20 minutes of reading almost every day.

I do not mean to make the week sound like its been easy though.  I'm working on looking at the positives (something I have to force myself to do...I'm such a natural pessimist!) Vanessa has been whinier than normal...she doesn't know quite where she fits in with the family.  She is constantly seeing what Violet and Calvin are up to.  If they don't look for a few minutes, they will find Vanessa over by the legos destroying things they've created resulting in frantic tears.  Vanessa likes to "play" with Eli which usually ends up badly.  She tries to give him affection, which somehow hurts him and makes him cry.  Vanessa will grab markers, pens, crayons, anything to write with, and write on ANYTHING available to her.  A bill from the mail I opened that day, or a picture Violet was coloring on.  I know a few things Vanessa loves (playing a puzzle on my Kindle Fire, or watching Dora) but I don't let her do those things every day.  She likes reading books and working on physical puzzles if someone helps her.  If Calvin is interested in something independently, Vanessa and Violet will play amazingly well together.  If Violet is interested in something independently, Calvin and Vanessa sometimes play well, other times they just fight.  It just seems like Vanessa is trying hard to find someone to play with.  I am not always available to be with her, she she gets into trouble.  Its a unique dynamic to have four kids at home all day.  Most days I didn't go anywhere because it just seemed like too much work to pack them all up and go someplace when I could wait til later in the evening when Dave was available to watch a couple of them.  This paragraph seems like she's a little terror.  Ok, sometimes.  But not all.  She is showing more affection by giving gentle kisses and likes to help me with everything, which makes me a more patient momma.  The Lord knows I need that. :) Making coffee, unloading the dishwasher, spreading peanut butter on bread, etc.  She's up there helping me.  So I let her.  And we try to have a good time. :)

I also taught Violet a lot of card games when I had some moments to do so.  I got super silly with her playing Slap Jack, Crazy 8s, War, Go Fish, and 31.  She is a "quality time" girl, she gets all lovey and huggy when I sit down to play with her.  She loved it and giggled through every game. 

So the days were full of playing, watching cartoons here and there (their latest favorite on Netflix is Richard Scarry's Busytown Mysteries with Huckle Cat) and playing some games on my Kindle.  Calvin and Violet's favorite game is Where's My Water and Vanessa likes the preschool puzzles.  I tend to avoid media entertainment though...its fine in small quantities, like sweets. :)
Oh yeah, one day we made banana muffins.  Not much else to do other than bake with brown spotty bananas.

Dave did travel Sunday through Tues afternoon.  He flew to Oregon to help settle an angry customer, then had a physical check up in IA City Tues morning in preparation for a surgery he is going to have done on his knees next week Friday (removing some pieces of knee caps that never fused together that should have as he grew from birth ~ they're becoming quite painful when he sits still).  So those couple days Dave was gone we hung out in the house.  After Dave left on Sunday I gave Calvin a haircut and all the kids got baths after that.  For Awana that night was "green" night for St. Patrick's Day something...so all 4 kids got green shirts on.  I sat in the coffee nook area and got to catch up with Dakota.
I think I did take all 4 of them to Walmart by myself, which wasn't so bad. I just avoid it if I have to.  I can't think straight even if I'm prepared with a list.

Thursday night was small group.  We've started a new one at Weidenbacher's and are reading through A.W. Tozer's "The Crucified Life" book.

Thursday night we also had the pleasure of Jeff and Denise Winters (Jeff is Dave's cousin) and their 3 kids join us for a night.  They were heading down to St. Louis for a Winters family event and stayed with us for a night.  They had already gotten to our house when we got home from small group.  We got to sit and visit after getting all the kids to bed.  The next morning we cooked up a breakfast of waffles, bacon and strawberries, and they were off.  My kids enjoyed their kids too!  Michael and Zachary, the twins, are only 3 weeks younger than Eli.  Their 2 yr old Nicole didn't say much but ran around and seemed to enjoy playing.

Then Friday came, and then the weekend.  Today spent a few hours at the chapel cleaning the coffee nook.  From noon-3 we were there.  I packed food for lunch and we ate there while we worked.  Dave noticed earlier in the week that some close-by construction project happening in the building caused a thick layer of dust to build up on the entire coffee nook area, so we pulled it apart, mopped the floor, wiped all the furniture and equipment down with wet rags, and make it sparkle again.  The reward was a yummy latte. :)

I played Blokus with Violet and Calvin tonight while Dave decided to whip up some pork fried rice for supper.  It turned out super yummy.

So that's a wrap!  Monday starts the end of the school year.  Only 10 weeks of school for Violet left!

*I just read my blog post from a year ago about Spring Break in 2012.  I can't believe the weather was in the 80s!  This week's high I think was close to 35.  Brrrrrrr!! 

Some pics from the week: