Spring Break

Well we survived Spring Break. My initial thought was that we have a lot to look forward to this year so we were just going to stay at home and lay low for the week except for maybe a day trip to do something fun. Then I also thought the break provided a great opportunity to for us to spend some time volunteering so I contacted a couple people about the possibility of doing just that. So while spending the week at home without a lot of plans could have been somewhat intimidating, the week went by pretty quickly and everyone was pretty happy. So this is how we spent out week…Of course there was some cleaning involved. We did some deep house cleaning, including the kids deep cleaning their rooms. I decided it was time to clean out the shower drain, which I have never done, and it had some nasty gunk built up in it.

The kids also spent some time out at the ranch working and playing around. Andrew was thinking about getting the kids some new boots since Jackson and Lincoln were growing out of theirs. So I ended up letting Jackson open up one of his birthday gifts early-some new Muck boots. They were a little too big though and he decided to wear his old ones a little longer.

One afternoon Andrew decided he wanted everyone to go out and fish. He even went to Wal-Mart to buy a couple extra fishing poles and then we all loaded up in the truck and headed out to the ranch. Andrew helped Miles and Bennett while the other three ventured out on their own. They all ended up catching some fish and had a good time. Miles was done a little earlier than the others, so we went and sat in the bed of the truck while the others finished up.

We had great weather for the week so we spent a lot of time outside. When their friends were in town, they would play with them. Jackson and Ellie also did some “training” for their kids’ triathlon by doing some running and biking outside. Andrew and I got some bike rides in too and I actually did my longest solo ride of 26 miles. And Miles and Bennett enjoyed riding their bikes outside too.

We also found some fun inside-trying to build a fort with the Crazy Fort kit the twins got for their birthday (we weren’t the most successful J) and Ellie and Faith tried out some chemistry experiments.

We spent a couple of hours two mornings to do our volunteer work. First up was helping out at Lifeline Pregnancy Help Center. We didn’t start out very well as Bennett decided he wasn’t happy and cried for the first 10 minutes while the girl was explaining what we were going to be doing. They set us up in their conference room. Jackson and Ellie were in charge of going through bags of clothes and dividing them up by size. Lincoln and the twins helped me go through baby bottles that are collected from churches that people put change in. Lincoln got the money out of the bottles while I went through all of the change to filter out anything that shouldn’t go to the bank and got deposit slips ready. The twins were supposed to roll up information forms to put into the now empty bottles. They would sometimes and then they would sometimes decide they didn’t want to help. So we did have a few episodes but we made it through it and the older ones were grateful that we got the opportunity to do it and so was I.

Our second day of volunteering was done at the K-Life house. Kevin had a list of different cleaning items he wanted done. He took Jackson upstairs and they cleaned out some closets together while Ellie folded some papers for mailings (she was quick to jump on that one) and the twins, Lincoln and I started working on the girls’ bathroom and the small group rooms. We cleaned out a couple other closets and vacuumed the whole main floor. Then we conquered the boys’ bathroom together as our last effort. Kevin said we didn’t need to clean it and said he would do it. The kids were fine with that but I told them that part of volunteering is some sacrifice and by us doing it, then Kevin wouldn’t have to.

We did do a few other fun things over the week too. Wednesday we loaded up and went to Sky Zone in Des Moines. My mom and Molly went too and but we didn’t have enough room in the car so they had to take a separate one. We stopped in Pella first to meet up with Kaitlin and her kids. We even made a quick stop by their new home to see how it was coming along. We ate lunch at Red Robin and then made our way over to Sky Zone. It took a little bit for the twins to warm up but they ended up having fun. I did have to take Bennett out to the car for a bit after he had a meltdown after I told him not to cut in line. But he recovered and he finished out his jump time.

Another fun thing for Andrew and I was that we actually went on a date Friday night. Molly watched the kids while we went to dinner at Maxwell’s and then walked over to the movie theater to see Risen which we both really liked.  It was really nice being able to go out with just each other -we had not done that in quite a while. And I went to the movies again on Sunday. I decided last minute to take the kids to see Zootopia. I tried to convince Andrew to come so we could all go but he opted to stay home and put the twins down for a nap. But the older kids really enjoyed the movie and we excited we got to go. Our final plans for spring break were to have a fire and roast hot dogs and s’mores but we had a bit of a rainy weekend so that didn’t work. Andrew just grilled the hot dogs and we made s’mores in the oven.