Spring Break

We spent our annual spring break at home again this year, but knowing the lay of the land better, we were not reduced to spending our days at McDonalds like last year.

We had friends over, made visits to the Science and Children’s Museums, enjoyed Easter and General Conference and topped it all off with a five hour video game competition among the children. Not once did any of them look at me with whines of “I’m bored.” We had a truly wonderful time.

I really enjoy taking the children on outings these days. I even let them venture into the Science Museum gift shop, where the younger three wanted polished rocks and the Tara wanted a heavily embellished blank book – I coveted that book myself, it was truly beautiful. I treated myself to a kaleidoscope, instead and allowed the children to take turns looking through it all the way home. All the way home, I was barraged with cries of “Mama, look at this one it’s beautiful!” They did not realize that looking through a kaleidoscope is something that’s particularly difficult to do while simultaneously maneuvering a two and a half ton vehicle down a well traveled six-lane highway at seventy miles per hour, so I did decline their invitations with thanks.

We hold our annual Easter egg hunt on Saturday so the children aren’t all sugared up and rotten for Easter itself. They insist on coloring eggs even though they don’t like to eat hard-boiled eggs. So, I boil about a dozen and use them for deviled eggs for which the adults will eat during our dinner. The children hunt for plastic eggs filled with candy. The upside of this is that if they miss one, it won’t spoil and stink up the house. John is the Hider-of-Things-to-be-Hidden-for-Easter. I take great delight in watching him get the hunt ready. This year the whole room was fair game – he even hid a couple things in the support brackets for our ceiling mounted television speakers. This year we encouraged them to work together to find everything and then divvied up the spoils at the end as usual.

General Conference continues to be one of my favorite times of the year. Of all the leaders we have in this world, our church leaders are ones whose motivation I never doubt and who have never let me down. Their actions speak as loudly as their words and they govern with wisdom, love and the guidance of Heaven. I deeply wish our national and local political leaders were as honorable and selfless. I feast on these conference messages encouraging me to improve myself, to bring myself ever more in-line with the teachings of Jesus Christ.

The children did a great job of listening to each session. They enjoyed the Primary conference booklets during the Saturday morning session, and were decently reverent through the Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning sessions. Sunday afternoon, however, with the smell of our Easter feast in the background, their friends calling to them from outside and all the candy from the day before taunting them from the kitchen, all those temptations made them much less reverent. Thank goodness for the ‘pause’ button on the DVR so we could stop, call their attention to a point the speaker was making and then start up again. We live closer to Salt Lake City than we ever have. I wonder if the children are ready to attend a session of conference in person.

After all that feasting on Sunday – spiritual and temporal – I borrowed a copy of one of the children’s favorite Wii games, charged up all the remotes and let them play it for nearly six hours while I dawdled away my time as I saw fit. Truly relaxing.

Then we ended our Spring Break that Tuesday with a trip to the Minneapolis Children’s Museum with friends. Ian and I are still fascinated by a ping-pong ball/metal track piece of functioning art on one of the floors. Tara and I experimented with the bubble exhibit making huge bubbles as big as our heads and others that could nearly wrap around us. Kay loved a factory/shipping exhibit, while Emma and Ian played with water pressure. All four of them love to explore a Sesame Street type cityscape exhibit and a forest exhibit.

I was particularly impressed with the way Kay politely maneuvered herself to the front of a large group of children listening to a presentation about snakes. Without blocking anyone’s view, stepping on any fingers/toes, or pushing past anyone, she managed to situation herself to be first in line when it came time for everyone to have a turn to touch the snake, even though she came in during the middle of the presentation after coming to get me. As an eldest child myself, I would have felt like since I came late I’d have to wait while those before me took a turn. But Kay’s assertiveness got her politely to the front of the line where she quietly took her turn and then quickly got out of the way for the next child. I was aghast, but couldn’t reprimand her because I couldn’t find that she’d violated any major social rules and there are definitely times when my personal rules of behavior mean I’m not assertive enough.

Despite the fact that we’d just had Easter candy a few days earlier, no visit to that museum is complete without a visit to Candyland, an old-fashioned candy store just around the corner. It even smells heavenly.