Spring Break 2016 - Birthdays, Basketball, Art, Drama, Party Fun

Our school's spring break seemed to come early this year.  The first two full weeks in March were mostly warm and sunny, however, so it felt wonderful.  After our trip to Israel in January, we needed those weeks to catch up on household projects, doctor appointments, and such, but the kids stayed busy with their many extracurricular activities and at play dates and birthday parties.  Muffin posed for spring photo shoots two weekends in a row.  We celebrated our daughter's 12th birthday, and our son went to several birthday parties for his classmates.

Rush Hour Karting & Ruckus pizza for Chase's birthday

He bowled a strike at Ben's birthday party!

I still tried to put in some billable hours over spring break, so while I worked, the kids decided to paint canvases on their own and unsupervised.  I thought the finished products were excellent.

On the house front, we began with spring cleaning, so our son learned about all the different cleaners and polishes we use for wood, tile, painted walls, glass, silver, stainless steal, granite, marble, leather, etc.

"I wish there was one universal cleaner we could use on everything," he said.
"There is," I replied as I watched him scrubbing baseboards.
"What is it, and where can we get it?" he asked.

"It's called elbow grease," I told him, "and children are a mother's primary supplier of it."

We also finalized plans for a landscaping project after much complaining from our neighbors which involved them contacting the town, consulting with an environmental specialist who recommended tens of thousands of dollars worth of changes that were not only expensive but unrealistic and impractical.

We painted (or hired someone to paint) two bathrooms, the staircase, my office, the guest room, the mudroom, and accent walls in the master bedroom, fitness room, and bonus room. We added glitter to the paint for the master suite, half bath, and my office for a beautiful shimmery effect.  We completed the last of our furniture refinishing projects, and my husband began finally unpacking and purging his office which we had been using as a bit of an attic.  It's a large room over the garage and has a nice man-cave feel to it now.  I have been working on a lot of photo collage projects for our super bonus room.  I cannot wait for my husband to get those up on the walls.  I hope to post updated pictures of all our new and improved rooms as soon as the pictures are hung.

Our son also finished what will probably be his last basketball season with Upwards basketball.  I knew I was sleep deprived (as always) at his last early morning game (and frustrated after many failed shopping attempts requiring returns and exchanges) when he made a rebound, and I shouted, "Good Refund!".

The season would have been incredibly depressing for him were it nor for his best friend Ben who was also on the same team with possibly the worst losing streak in Upward history.  Still, I'm glad our son learned how to lose with dignity and how to put the interests of others before his own, at least with regard to his basketball team.  Most of his team had never played basketball before, and several on the team had special needs, so I enjoyed watching our son give those players many opportunities to improve and score points as they were integrated onto a team and experienced basketball for the first time.

Dan the Animal Man brought some of his birds to the end of season celebration.

Our daughter decided not to do spring sports at her school this season.  Instead she is playing AAU basketball, and I think she's a bit blown away by the skill level she's seeing at tournaments.  Her last tournament was the day after her state drama competition which had her gone from 6am to midnight the day before, so she was dragging. She had to miss the first day of the tournament because of her drama competition, so she did not get as much playing time as she would have liked, but she certainly gained respect for the competition.  They play like grown champions. One of the 6th graders in the tournament was 6'2", which explains why she is required to bring her birth certificate to the tournaments.

 

Spring Break concluded with the beginning of Daylight Savings Time.  Our last sunset view before DST began was so pretty.  I took this pic from my bike on a very old low budget Android phone.  Imagine how much prettier it would be taken with an iphone or an SLR.