Spring Break

Life has continual ups and downs. Some come simultaneously. That describes our Spring Break this year. I'll touch on the negatives then get to the good stuff.

Negatives:
1. Jared was in Germany and then off to Woodbadge. We only got to see him for a few hours in between.
2. Amy had pink eye.
3. Hyrum had pink eye.
4. Kaitlyn had a double ear-infection.
5. Kaitlyn's antibiotic was $125 because she's allergic to amoxicillin. Yikes!
6. Leah, Kaitlyn, Hyrum, Amy & I had coughing troubles at night.
7. I lost my voice from Wednesday to Friday.
8. We were under tornado watch and one of our shutters blew off. The storm lasted through the night with VERY loud and close thunder/lightning. I was up almost every hour that night with a coughing child or listening to the storm.
9. Kaitlyn got pink eye.
10. Kaitlyn developed a rash on her face, of course over the weekend while Jared was still gone. I was left wondering if it's an allergic reaction to the antibiotic, or part of her illness, or something else.

Now for the better stuff.

Monday - Leah really wanted to take us for a walk through our woods to see some "waterfalls" our neighbors had discovered. We have never really explored the woods behind our yard, so we decided it was time. We had a good time but I kept watching the sky because I knew we were under a tornado watch. At the first sign of a storm I wanted to get back to our house ASAP. We made it through our walk just fine. The storm didn't start until after most in my house were asleep.



Tuesday and Wednesday we went with Lauralee & Megan to Great Wolfe Lodge in North Carolina (the indoor water park). This was perfect this year because the kids had something to do and so it made life lots easier while Jared was gone. It was somewhat pricey, but when we split the cost between the two families it wasn't too bad. Apparently Great Wolfe Lodge is a chain, so it may also be in your area. If you want money-saving tips, let your kids know in advance you're not going to do all the extra stuff that costs extra money, bring your own food for most of your meals, and if you want to buy a dinner, order a large pizza for $12.99 which gives 8 huge slices. We took a lot of pictures, so I'll break them up into categories.

First, here are the pictures we could use as a brochure for the lodge. :)

Here are pictures of our room and other miscellaneous areas of the lodge:

Here are pictures of pajama story time held each evening, and an origami activity held in the mornings. The kids got to make an oragami wolf.

Here are pictures of the cub club (a play area for the kids). I got a huge kick out of hearing Hyrum play. He found a shopping cart and was excited to tell Kaitlyn he was going shopping. Then, he proceeded to take toys from a toy box, put them in his cart, deliver them to a playhouse, and repeat these steps until the toy box was completely empty. I realized that to his three-year-old mind, this kind of "shopping" was absolute heaven!

Here are pictures of the water park fun.

Here are pictures of Amy who did her own thing most of the time.

Thursday through Saturday we crashed and waited out our illnesses. The kids played a lot of Wii, and Leah & Kaitlyn mopped my floors for me on Saturday. They've helped a lot with watching Amy also so that I could get some moments of rest. We watched two movies we really liked, "Ramona & Beezus" and "Nanny McPhee Returns". I found out that I guess my kids have never watched the original "Nanny McPhee", but they still could follow the movie.

It's been a hard and a fun Spring Break. I'm left with one of those times where I can look at our week one of two ways...incredibly difficult with sicknesses and absent husband, or incredibly fun with time off of school and fun activities. I think I'll choose to think of it as the latter and throw in a pinch (okay, maybe a big pinch) of difficult.