Spring Break

The kids and I headed up to Washington for Spring break.  We flew in late on Saturday and woke up Easter morning to dye eggs (or dye hands, if you are Eleanor).

My mom had a wonderful time buying treats (and shoes) for the kids and we had an egg hunt that afternoon.

There was of course much tickling and giggling and playing.  The boys were constantly begging someone to jump on the trampoline with them.  One evening Eleanor was in the bath and heard the boys jumping and screamed and cried because she wanted to go out too.

We took a rainy day outing to Olympia to the Children’s museum.  We have planned to go there every time I go home for the past 6 years, and we finally made it.  It was definitely worth the trip.

My mom helps coach the high school track team so we went out to a practice with her.  She smoothed out the long jump track and the boys had a blast seeing how far they could jump (measured by the tongs on the rake). 

After jumping we played some soccer and ran around the track.  It was cold and drizzly and we loved it.

I know by now I should probably stop saying “back home” when I talk of going to Washington, after all, I have lived in Utah for 12 years.  I guess I will stop calling it that when it stops feeling that way to me.  Which, I hope, is never.

80 Degrees?

I think Weather has a bad name in the realm of conversation. It has been deemed a "safe" topic. No, worse than that, it has been deemed the topic that everyone supposedly turns to at uncomfortable moments, or when conversing with someone you don't know very well. But, weatherr is actually very interesting. In fact, so interesting that Jack runs out to get the newspaper every morning so he and Jared can go over the weather map at breakfast.

Of course this has led to conversations with Jack about the weather- mostly about what he should wear and what we will do that day. But now that it is supposed to be Spring- which, according to Jack is warm weather, then we should be able to turn on the sprinkler. So, as he was demanding some kind of concrete answer about when the appropriate sprinkler season would arrive, I told him it has to be 80 degrees out before I would get out the sprinkler or the slip and slide.

However, we have not had the nicest of Springs here in Utah. But, the city has turned on our irrigation water and the residents have been out fixing and replacing sprinklers. (For you Washingtonians, we Utahans have sprinkler systems that turn on according to a timer so our grass will be nice and green all summer- something you don't likely have to concern yourselves with.) For some strange reason, my neighbor's sprinklers came on at about 4 in the afternoon on Friday and my sprinkler deprived children just couldn't stay away. They had a blast. But then, it didn't last long, since it wasn't anywhere near 80- more like 60.