Spring Break Recovery

I didn't mean to become a blog loser, it just kind of happened. In an attempt to get back into it, I feel like I have to give a brief overview of the last few months, you know, just because. Maybe it will make me feel like I really have been doing something other than checking FB since my husband is trying to find an addiction program for me.

February: Adults-only ski trip to Snowbird and Snowbasin, UT. Good snow, great food, best friends. We loved spending lots of time with my college roommate BFF Natalie and VA BFFs the Morgans, where we got to spend Rob's birthday with his personal tour of gorgeous Snowbasin and its long, long runs, with Julie joining us for a delicious lunch at the swanky lodge at the top.

March: 2nd Annual Great Wolf Lodge trip with the Morgans. How can you go wrong with the Morgans? Whether it's deep frying a turkey in the backyard or cooking tacos in the microwave of your hotel room since the only restaurant buffet is gross AND pricey, these guys are guaranteed to be fun and don't care how white or flabby we look mid-winter in our swimsuits. At least they've never insulted us to our faces. Now that I've raved about you guys, send me some GWL photos because I forgot my camera!

The rest of March we spent at home, slaving away in the garage (painting, building shelves, Craigslisting junk), yard work (compost/reseeding the front yard, planting trees, and still have landscape trimming and re-mulching to go, along with composting/reseeding the back yard), and Shawn demo-ed the U-G-L-Y tile in our basement bathroom so he can retile before our new carpet comes in. The only photos I have don't give you the full-scope of how junky the garage was, but hey, you don't really care anyway, do ya! Now that I think about it, Shawn did leave town to enjoy some spring training ball in FL after speaking at a conference, but since I was only invited if I came without my kids and can you believe it, I don't have a live-in nanny, I didn't go and therefore have no photos to prove that he went either.

Garage Before

Garage After

Moving on to SPRING BREAK! I quickly dismissed my insane idea of driving to Nashville to visit our cousins for the week when I found out how long the drive would take, so we stayed local. My husband teases me and my obsession with avoiding crowds, but listen, if you were chasing three small people in three different directions by yourself, you'd understand. Speaking of crowds, we did enjoy a lovely morning walking the Tidal Basin to see the cherry blossoms with a million other people. No photos. Nothing like our mid-week walks we've done in the past. Never doing it again. But we did manage to have a really fun spring break and avoided the spring break/tourist crowds, the one exception being the McDonald's line at the Air/Space Museum by Dulles.

Monday: Air/Space Museum with friends. What's more fun? Running through the massive hangars with your buddies or checking out the planes? Standing in line for 30 minutes, not able to identify if it is your own child screaming or your friend's two lines over, only to get to the front and find out the credit card function is not working or finding seating for 16? Watching the planes take off and land from the control tower or toting a massively tantruming preschooler out of the museum? You decide. Leigh, I need copies of your pics. See, not only am I a blog loser, I am a camera/memory-capturing loser too. At least we have the stores that go with preserved.

Tuesday: My first venture to the previously "avoided-like-the-plague" Chuckee Cheese. The weather was not cooperating so much with my outdoor plans, so we took a gamble and I'm not sure which one of my three boys enjoyed it the most. Could have done without another massive tantrum (who's kid is he anyway?) and the 30 minute wait to exchage our tickets for a huge bag of cotton candy, but my kids felt like a trip to CC was equivalent to the Magical World of Disney. I'll go ahead and bug Leigh for photos again here since the timing is appropriate.

Wednesday: Great idea credit goes to Julie for suggesting Luray Caverns. The drive was gorgeous (complete with my begging a warning off the cop who pulled me over for speeding), and after a chilly picnic, we spent more than an hour "exploring" the caves, which the kids just loved. Hey, guess what! I actually took my camera along on this trip.

As if they needed something else to do, we capped Wednesday off with the most delicious homemade pizza on earth and a movie night at Leigh's mom's home theatre.

Okay people, this is getting tiresome, don't you think? I am definitely saving Easter for another day. But pushing onward...

Thursday: We finally lucked out with some picture-perfect weather for Ft. Washington MD, one of my favorite spots. NO ONE is ever there, the fort provides hours of exploring for the boys, tons of grassy space to fly kites and picnic, and hey, if you're tired of the beautiful views of Mt. Vernon and DC, you can walk down to the Potomac River and throw rocks into the water.

So what do you do with three exhausted boys and their exhausted mother at the end of an exhausting week? You pick up their father and drive to Baltimore, for a walk around the Inner Harbor, a delicious dinner in Little Italy, a horrible night's sleep at a free hotel, and a morning at the children's museum. They collapse in the car as you speed home to pick up another truckload of compost and do your Easter-dinner shopping at Costco. I am still recovering friends. Had a wee breakdown Sunday morning but all is well. Minus a few cases of the pukes and a case of strep throat, life is back to "normal". Just in time for t-ball and vacation season to begin!!

THE END. I promise.