Baseball, Snow Day & Johnny Depp ..... Oh My!

Yay for Spring Break! Just kidding... nothing is turning out right. We've had a few pleasant surprises so far, but it's not turning out the way we planned. Due to the baby and some rather extensive travel plans this summer, we decided that Spring Break would be a "Stay-cation." I have been planning what we are going to do for months now, which has led to some of the disappointment.

To begin the break, we stayed home and watched General Conference. This was great. Often we find ourselves out of town on Conference Weekend and the days are as hectic as any other. This year, we were home, and it was wonderful. We hung out as a family and enjoyed listening to the words of our modern day prophets. We finished the weekend having dinner with Matt's parents and enjoying a visit with them.

Monday morning, Jack had preschool, so he slept over at Grandma Homer's on Sunday night. This was really nice because I didn't have to get up and out of the house early like I normally do... Spring Break for me too! Taking advantage of a little Jack-free time, Allie and I took Will to Target to get pictures of him in his blessing outfit. If it seems like this kid has had more pictures taken of him than Lindsay Lohan, you would be right. I think he's on track to surpass Erin as the kid with the most baby pictures. Anyway, we HAD to get pictures of Will in his blessing outfit because I've got really cute ones of the other kids and didn't want him to be any different. Unfortunately for us, Kiddie Kandids, who took our other pics is out of business so Will's won't feature the same, cute chair. Erin dressed Will in a little baseball outfit and as an afterthought, Allie grabbed his Ted Williams bat from Uncle Greg and Aunt Sarah. When we got to the photo studio, they had lots of cute baseball stuff. So, Will got his picture taken in his baseball duds too. While I ended up spending a little bit more than I had planned (don't you always?) I got some really cute pics taken of our little guy! Count this in the pleasant surprise category.

After the pictures, we headed out to pick up Jack from school. The girls packed a picnic lunch and we ate and then headed to Seven Peaks Salt Lake (formerly Raging Waters) to redeem our "Pass of all Passes." If you haven't heard of this, it's an awesome deal and we hope to be able to use it tons this summer. Then we headed off to our first Spring Break adventure.

The Bingham Copper Mine (sounds way exciting, doesn't it?) Well at the very least, I thought it would be awesome for the kids to see it. I've heard it's amazing. I've also heard that I've been there before, but I don't remember it. Well guess what? Because it snowed on Sunday, the visitor's center was closed! I checked the hours; I did my research and we drove ALL THE WAY OUT THERE AND THE BLASTED PLACE WAS CLOSED! UGGHHHH! My darling little children had nothing positive to say about the experience and to say I was bummed would be an understatement. Well, what to do?

We went to see Rango. Jack picked the movie. The rest of us wanted to go and see Hop, despite the fact that the girls had already seen it with Grandma. Jack, in keeping with his poopy attitude, refused to go, and being the weak parents we were, we caved and went to Rango. I have to say, I really liked it. I don't know that I would recommend it for little kids, as many of the jokes are geared towards adults, but the characters were great and Johnny Depp never fails to impress me with his versatility. The only thing that shocked me was the use of the H-E-double hockey sticks word more times than I would care to mention. At any rate, with movie popcorn and Diet Coke, how bad can the day be?

By the way, for those of you who are curious, we are now five days into April and I haven't been to McDonald's once. I have not, as yet, suffered from the shakes, but I am finding myself having to consciously remind myself not to pull my car into their parking lot. Five down, twenty-five more to go.

When we got home, I decided that the grass needed to be cut. Granted, it's not growing much, but the crabgrass is driving me nuts! Why is this the only thing that grows until June? Hate it! Want to dig out my whole front lawn and start over, but that's probably not going to happen. Well, Matt and I have been talking about teaching Erin to mow the lawn this year. So, there's no time like the present. I opened the garage, pulled out the mower, started it up and showed her how. And guess what??? She finished the whole thing! We may have to wait a year or two until she can edge, but it's so nice to have a little person to turn this over to. Put this in the pleasant surprise category.

Since I know your eyes are probably bleeding from reading about my boring life, I'll try to keep this next part short. The weather is conspiring against us. I don't think we're going to be able to finish out my list of activities for Spring Break.. too cold and crappy driving conditions. We will therefore be confined to museums and home, and by default Lego Batman, Barbie games on the computer and more Scooby-Doo movies on Netflix than I care to mention. But, we're happy and we're together. Matt is home this week (mostly) and we're getting a bit of planning done on backyard projects and the like. Taking it easy might be kind of fun, who knows?

Stay tuned for a wrap up of the week coming to a computer near you!