Cruise Director

So, yes, our Spring Break was in fact last week, as opposed to this past week, but I am just now getting around to posting about it.  I wanted to post earlier, but once again, I cannot access any of the pictures I took.  And please don't tell me it's "user error".  It is a "stupid, old computer" error.  Ahem.  Anyway......

I don't know about you, but the week of Spring Break is when I take on a whole new role as a mom.  I call it cruise director mode.

Most of our usual activities are canceled for the week giving us five (or nine, depending how you count it) days of total boredom freedom.  While I can usually count on piano lessons or a Girl Scout meeting to help break up the week, I couldn't rely on those and had to find a way to fill all of that lovely free and unstructured time.  I know a lot of people take trips during Spring Break, but it simply wasn't in our budget this year so we had to make due.

So I put on my cruise director hat for the three "entertain me because this is soooo boring" pint-sized residents of our house.  We planted strawberry bushes.  We went to the library.  We read lots of books.  The kids spent some time with both sets of their in-town grandparents.  We played a little Wii.  We tore up our deck and filled in the back yard in preparation for a new swingset.  Sydney practiced piano.  She also finished a project for school.  We went to see "The Lorax." We went out to eat at a fondue restaurant.  Sydney had a friend sleepover.  We made cinnamon rolls for said sleepover.

And probably my favorite activity of the week: pillow sumo wrestling.  I have both pictures and a video of this, but since my computer isn't cooperating, you will just have to trust me that this was the cutest thing ever.  I had each child put one of Ryan's t-shirts on over their clothes and then I stuffed two pillows between them and the shirt (one in front and one in back).  For over an hour, they rolled around on the floor, knocked each other over, piled on top of one another and had a blast.

Ryan watched the video and commented on how creative of an idea it was.  It wasn't my idea.  I got it from this blog.  You should check it out if you're looking for fun ways to entertain your kids.  In fact if you scroll down through a couple of entries, you'll see her pictures of the pillow sumo wrestling.

Anyway, the week passed by more quickly than I thought it would, but I made the mistake of keeping them too busy because they now think they're going to get a whole summer of being entertained.  Little do they know that I  have traded in my cruise director hat for a teacher's hat; I've already started thinking about what kind of educational activities to bore them with over the summer.  Workbooks, flash cards and reading - oh my!