Spring Break

Our school finally had Spring Break straddling the Easter holiday.  We were originally supposed to have Friday through Tuesday, but Tuesday was a furlough day.  Well, at the beginning of the year, they reinstated all furlough days, but I still had it on my calendar as spring break.  I made our reservations and plans, then found out my mistake (our THEIR mistake!).  We decided to keep with what we had planned, and here is what we did.

Thursday evening I took the kids to Providence for a sleep over with the grandparents.  Of course we ate ice cream and played.  Everyone just screamed excitedly when I told them where we were going, but I guess it's been too long since we've had a sleep over and the girls had a lot of trouble getting to sleep.

Friday morning I was disappointed when I found my parents were already up...my mom quickly jumped back into her bed so I could climb in with her for a chat.  It's one of my favorite things in the world!  She never let me get in her bed when I was a girl, my dad always took care of nightmares and other nightly awakenings.

Anyway, you can read in the Just Ducky post about our walk along the Logan River.  I took some pictures...with their camera...so hopefully I can get those on my computer some day!  We ate lunch at Costa Vida, thanks to some free kid's meals from the reading program at school.  After that the kids played some more, and after more ice cream, we finally came home for dinner.  I admit now to stopping for Little Ceasar's on the way home...just too good to pass up!

Saturday we went to Smith's for the candy grab, but there was triple the people than were there last year so not quite as fun.  John took the 3 olders shooting, which I'll have to post about some day.  Katie Anne and I stayed home and cooked.  I made this beautiful Lemon Meringue Pie...I wanted to make sure that, in case of emergency, I could make my own! Sorry, it won't rotate no matter what I do!  Trust me though, it was good!

 We dyed eggs of course...

Easter morning the kids found their baskets.  We only kiddingly speak of the Easter Bunny...everyone knows it's me.  Thankfully, they were happy with their baskets and I only had to re-hide one basket that was found just too quickly!

After that and before candy consumption, we ate Peep's Pancakes:

Well, they sort of look like it anyway...
We had a very nice Church service, then came home to take a few picture.  I really blew it with the boys...I had wanted to get them something new to wear, but just never could find it.  They did have new socks, but were too lazy to go downstairs to get them when they were getting dressed.  Here they are after church...

After a ham dinner and a bit of a rest, I hid the eggs they had dyed.  They had a great time finding ALL of the eggs.  They sent John and I inside while they hid the eggs but we came up two short...they stuck them pretty far into the rock wall, and I can tell you that I am seriously afraid to stick my own hands in there!  Who knows what, or who, is lurking in there!

Monday morning we were on our way to Salt Lake City.  We first went to the Church History Museum.  They have lots of neat artifacts and one of the docents went around with us (probably to protect the stuff!) and told us lots of neat stories.  The kids were especially fond of this real statue of the Angel Moroni that used to grace a chapel in Washington D.C.

They have a great children's area, and here the girls are dancing (they are seeing the video in the mirror in front of them).  We also went over to the South visitor's center on Temple Square to see the model of the Salt Lake Temple.  Of course I was in love with the flowers!  We stopped in to see my Aunt Mary at the family history library.  She sat us right down (after the kids got candy from Uncle Mel) and looked up some stuff for us.   I saw my grandma and grandpa on the New York Census when they lived there many years ago, while attending school at Cornell.  I could even look up their home on Google Maps!  She found John's great grandmother's death certificate also, which was a little more tricky but valuable to us.

We met my neice Andrea for lunch, which was a highlight of the day.  We went to the Gateway Food Court and let the kids pick whatever they wanted, a very big deal for us, as we usually get only off the dollar menu and waters. :)

After that we had a free family pass to the Discovery Gateway Children's Museum.

Me and KatieAnne and some kid in the car, with Jack preparing to load our tires with air!

We stopped at Kirkhams next to drop our tent off for a fixing, then Kohl's to spend my Kohl's cash, my 10 off 20, with 15% off.  Just too many good deals to pass up!  We then made our way to Midway to spend the night at a condo.  We were all dead tired and hungry by then.  I took a casserole already made, but the oven wouldn't heat up, even after 45 minutes so we just microwaved it, ate, and went to bed.  The next morning we got up to go swimming and had to walk up to the pool in this weather...

A true Utah spring break!  We had a good time, though, then went to In-N-Out for lunch, to Cabella's to walk around and see the fish and animals, and home in time for Jane to go to dance, me to go to a stake training meeting, and the rest to go to Pack Meeting.  Whew!  A fun and, besides food, free weekend, with lots of great memories!