Spring Break!!!!!

We had such an awesome Spring Break!!! I was so excited about it and had so many plans, and it really went mostly the way we planned, I was pleased :) I'm gonna have to zip through it all though or I will never get it posted, so I hope you don't mind. I might have to add details later as they come to me... this memory of mine.....



MONDAY: Played in the hail. I have so many pictures of odd weather from my Dad's porch since he always calls up the kids when he sees something fun happening outside. It was crazy how big this hail was. Like dippin dots! The kids enjoyed it for a second.

Look at how perfectly they lay on the pine needles!! I love that!

In the evening (yeah, I can't remember what else we did that day, I do recall bribing the kids with the Aquarium, so we must have done some cleaning up as well) for FHE we met Aunt Heidi down at the Living Planet Aquarium for their half off day. It was PACKED!!!! A little too packed. But we did get to see most everything. I was sweating and Erika was a pill, but overall it was a good time.

We even got to pet the Sting Ray!!! I had told Kelly that I wasn't sure if we would be able to do all the same things she did on her field trip, but I was wrong. They loved this part. The Stingrays were flipping their fins up and splashing in the water.... reminded us of Sea World.... we were in the Splash Zone.

This one's for Heidi :)

And this one's for me :) Erika is SO CUTE!!!!

Kelly requested that I take this one.

Luke requeszted this one :)

I requested this one :) We got outside and it was POURING RAIN!!! Erika was not dressed for such weather. Look how cute she looks!!! AGAIN!!!

TUESDAY:

We went Swimming at the Rec Center. It took us FOREVER to get out of the house, so we ended up having very ltitle time to swim because we had to leave to take Charity to a birthday party, but we had such a good time!! The kids are so brave in the pool! They all just go off and do their own thing basically. It's fun to watch the older four play together and with Steve (he came with). They all went around in the lazy river a ton and played on the little playground. Noah took the entire time easing into it. By the time he would actually walk out into the water alone, it was time to go. I felt bad. We'll have to go back again soon so that he can have more fun. It was a little difficult to take 6 little kids swimming (I did have help from Steve), but nothing is worse than the locker room situation afterward!!! Especially when there are only 2 "Family changing rooms"..... that annoys me to no end. And we were in a hurry so of course the kids moved slowly. I was way more stressed out than I needed to be by the time we left. I had to cool down. We took Charity to her birthday party and I stressed out some more about letting her go with people I don't know very well, skating. I'm still doubting our decision but it's been a week and she was fine, so I need to get over it. She had a total blast. The rest of us kind of bumbed around and later our Home Teacher popped in for a visit. We have the best home teacher. Bro. Oaks. We feel very blessed to have such a faithful home teacher.

WEDNESDAY:

We got up bright and early, dropped Noah off at my Mom's and headed on down to Taylorsville to take Casey and Adam to the Bishops Storehouse for some service. Casey had some hours he needed to make up at school with service so we went and helped out. I had no idea that you could just go and volunteer to help there, anytime. And I had no idea how fun it could be!!! Maybe I'm weird, but I totally loved it!!! Made me miss all the service projects I used to get in on in HS and YW.... it's such a good feeling to serve. We bagged oranges and toilet paper for 2 hours and then called it a day. We did meet this really sweet lady there.... She's the one that showed us around and made us feel welcome. She told me all about her single-mom life and how she had to work two jobs and never see her daughter and her crazy fights with her ex. I felt bad for her. She was so upbeat and so energetic though. She even ran out to her car to get her portable DVD player so that my kids wouldn't have to work :).... which is funny because they only watched the movie a little.... they liked the work :).... they won't really admit it, but they kept getting up from the movie to help out. We had a pretty good system going.... got a lot done. I was happy.

We took Casey and Adam home and picked up Sierra ("Kelly's cousin") for our big sleepover. I promised the girls a sleepover during Spring Break so we wanted to make this really fun. I had had some coupons for Kangaroo Zoo for quite a while, and new that Wednesday was one of the days I could use it, but come to find out, on the way there, it had expired. We were SO bummed. Especially Bradley. He was so excited to show us all around (he's the only one that's been to Kangaroo Zoo before) But alas, it is WAY too expensive to go there without my coupon, so we had to change our plans. We ended up going to the park instead and they really seemed to have enough fun. And the promise of Jumping Jacks (on their coupon) tomorrow, was good enough for them. When we got home we made dinner and Kelly and Sierra begged to help... SO cute! They made the dessert almost etirely by themselves. I can't believe how old they are getting! It was strange to not watch a movie or something since that's what you do at a sleepover, but Nate made the girls a fun tent and they were just too excited to sleep in it! So that was fun.

THURSDAY:

We bummed around for a long time.... cleaned up..... watched more than enough Spongebob and iCarly..... then headed on out to West Jordan for some Jumping Jacks fun. They were thrilled and ran around like they were in heaven for about.... oh.... 15 minutes..... then they started coming to me to tell me they were hungry, or bored, or didn't have anything to do.... isn't it funny how that is!!! It was probably mostly because I had company. Nate's cousin Amber was there with her little girl and new baby, just by coincidence, so we got to talk for a while. It was really fun, I just love Nate's cousins. Noah even got brave, and climbed into one of the bounce houses while I wasn't looking.... I was SO thrilled!! I was nursing Erika so I had Charity take some pictures and they just didn't turn out.... but as long as we all know, he WAS in there!!

Once Amber left the kids were out of my hair and having fun. It was shortly after that that Sierra's Dad came and got her. The kids were getting really tired, but for some reason didn't want to leave :), so we stayed for about another half hour and then came home to beat the traffic. It was a fun day and everyone slept really well that night.

This is Luke walking NOah to the car because he had been spooked by the neighbor dog.... how cute is THAT!

FRIDAY:This was the big "MOVIE DAY" that we had all been looking forward to so much. Nate had wanted to spoil the kids with taking them to see "How To Train Your Dragon" in 3D ever since it came out. They were SOOOOOOO excited. We went to the gateway and saw it, loved it, and wanna see it again. I couldn't believe how amazing the 3Dness of it was. I LVOED that. It was fun to watch teh kids watch it too. I was happy with how well everyone did. Erika slept the ENTIRE time, Noah only got restless the last 10 or 15 minutes. Luke was fine, but then complained about how they said, "the 'B' word" when it was over. Bradley liked the glasses and was bummed that he didn't get to keep them, but he was sure into the whole Dragon thing, and now wants to have a Dragon Party and get the Dragon fruit snacks and Dragon everything that they have at Walmart.... he's so funny. Kelly and Charity had a good time too. They all keep quoting it and talking about it. I forgot how fun it was to take them to the movies. I dno't think we've ever taken them to anything but the dollar theater, but they did so well, it was worth it. On the way home we stopped at McDonald's and experienced something I never wish to experience again and still can't blog about it.... maybe later..... it was awful. But overall the day was fun.

SATURDAY was mostly spent lounging around.... I think we got a little spring cleaning done, but we did make our way down to the Blue Park. The kids had fun there. Nate played soccer with the girls.

Noah was being so brave going down t his big slide.... so cute.

I guess it might not seem like all that special of a week to some people, but for us this was vacation!!! I loved having my girls home (as always) I kept joking about homeschooling them, because I just miss them so much during the day and love to have them around. But they vetoed that idea a million times over. They love school. I guess that's a good thing..... or will be..... either way, it was a nice, needed break, and I loved it.