Spring Break 2011: #5

Zac took the last weekday of Spring Break off work and he picked up the 10 baby poplar trees that we had ordered. And he planted them with Samuel and Elisabeth. We're sort of determined to pretend we live somewhere where there are trees. So, although these trees are only 3 ft tall right now, someday they will be a forest in our backyard!

It was sort of a bummer of a day for me, can't say why for certain. But.

There! And that's all for spring break. (phew!) ;)

Spring Break 2011: #4

Thursday: welll, I tried to make these baked apple cinnamon doughnut things (and I took some really awful photos of some of the process. My bowls are pretty though, aren't they?). They turned out very crumbly and it didn't make very many, but they were tasty. The consensus was that they were kind of more like a muffin - so the kids were disappointed that they didn't get "real" doughnuts. Whatever. And Elisabeth hovered around me and tried to help but that was the only real "fun" involvement involved - but at least we all had a treat to eat, and that's something out of the ordinary at least. Then Isaac and Abigail slept downstairs in the little tent.

For the record though: remind me not to ever commit myself to trying to be fun everyday again. haha. It's too much pressure, I've decided. And it's rather counterproductive to start feeling like you're a failure at being "fun." ;)

see ya

[note: I've been trying to publish this all day but we updated to IE 9 which apparently has a nice little glitch with blogger which prevents being able to publish posts. It's taken me all day to figure this out and have now taken off IE 9, so now hopefully I can be back to blogging happily. Just thought you might want to know.]

Spring Break 2011: #3

Sleepover! Abigail had a friend sleepover Tues night (for the first time ever actually) and they had a great time playing video games, making home videos, jumping on the trampoline (and whatever else they did when I wasn't watching). ;) They also generously played with all the younger siblings which made them very happy, and made me very happy. So that was most of Wed! In the home stretch now, Spring Break is almost over! The weather got sort of chilly so I'm tempted to stay home today and maybe make homemade pretzels. Or cookies. Or doughnuts. We'll see. I had sort of vague plans to do some spring cleaning/organizing/rearranging this week, but that hasn't happened. Someday Zac and I also need to paint the other half of our bedroom. Hm. Ohh, the best laid plans . . . Never enough time (or energy) to do everything I'd like to. I think energy is the main culprit. I don't have any. Ever. Oh well. Ok. Time to get my exercise done and do something fun today! Ready, set . . . GO!

Spring Break 2011: #2

Roller Skating!!! A friend of mine was celebrating her birthday by taking her kids roller-skating and invited a bunch of friends to come along. Of course you all know I love roller-skating and I am beyond thrilled to pass on this love to my kids. Yay! Then what made it even better was first off, they only charged us $2 a person rather than $5 a person which was a pleasant surprise, to say the least, and then, as a result of all the "shows" and skating they've been doing downstairs in the unfinished basement, we reached another fantastic family milestone: all 4 kids on the rink and roller-skating all by themselves!! I was so impressed and proud of them! Samuel would speed up and try to race ahead of me every time I approached him and Elisabeth only fell down (and stayed sitting on the rink until I got her) a couple times. But I got to skate around by myself! wohoo! And Elisabeth picked me to skate with her for the "couple skate" which I admit warmed my mommy heart (although Isaac refused to skate with Abigail. oh well.) Anyway, it was a lot of fun so I count that as success #2. yay. :)

Spring Break 2011: #1

In my attempts to actually be a good mommy and take my kids to do fun things over Spring Break, I'm going to blog about it again and tell you how I did - because that keeps me accountable for my ambitions. Aren't you so excited? Today the weather was somewhat nice (sunny and in the 50's - which is an improvement over the 2 days of snow we got over the weekend) so I took the kids and went for a walk/bike ride. The big kids rode bikes, Samuel rode his scooter for most of the time (then sat in the stroller for the rest), and Elisabeth tried to run along and keep up with them or sat in the stroller and cried when she couldn't keep up. Fun times. First we stopped at the playground and they rolled down the hill for awhile (and pretended to be dizzy zombies walking back up).

Then we walked out to where there are some horse properties.

There was one horse that came over to say hi.

It was kind of funny to watch them react to the horse. They're not very used to being around animals. Especially big animals. ;)

And I had some fun messing around with editing in Picnik. :)

Oh and I finished reading 2 books (Unbroken and The Lover's Dictionary).

Not a bad start to the week, I'd say.

What are you doing, or have you done, or plan on doing, for Spring Break? Do share.

ummm

Not long ago, I found this cute little idea on Pinterest. It looked like a tasty grab-and-go breakfast. A typical egg/bacon/biscuit breakfast with a unique presentation. Looks yummy, eh?Yeah and mine: didn't turn out looking quite as yummy. Huh. It was sort of a drippy egg explosion mess all over my oven (I thought my kids would like the eggs better scrambled. I'm not sure if that alone was my mistake, or if some other things went wrong as well). But oh well. A+ for effort, right?

Today:

- I glanced over as I was pulling out of the driveway this morning and saw these "decorations" in our tree (courtesy of Samuel): - and Elisabeth put on some of her own makeup (plus some blueberries on her chin from breakfast):

(Just thought I'd check in and say Hello. It seems we've been busy with just a lot of stuff lately and my dear little personal demons have snuck out to taunt me, too. They like to keep me busy. So my head has been full, but with nothing that feels like bursting out into bloggy loveliness . . . quite yet. see you again soon)