Spring BREAK - The Middle

Not quite the blogging momentum I had in March....I'll try to catch up.

Way back at the start of spring break, my friend Emily and I were sitting in church and when the meeting was over we started chatting about what our plans were for the week.  We realized that neither of us had much going on and were lamenting the fact that many people we knew were heading out on grand excursions.  We thought, hey, why don't we just be crazy and go somewhere ourselves?  We'll be super exotic and spontaneous!  And that, my friends, is how we ended up on a whirlwind trip to Vernal, Utah.

It was actually super fun. Em went home that afternoon and searched for hotel rooms in the bustling metropolis that is Vernal. I looked up a map to the local dinosaur attractions, where I remembered going as a little kid.  We left Tuesday morning, drove east for three hours until we arrived in the wee town.  We pretty much went straight to the local dinosaur museum.  We made one stop along the way - a place I thought was the dino museum because I saw giant statues of dinosaurs outside.  I almost came to a screeching halt when I saw them because they are the exact statues of which I have pictures with me and my dad.  I figured we had hit the right spot.  We hadn't.  It was just a city park outside the library and another tiny little museum of the local heritage.  I felt super guilty going inside and asking for directions to the big dinosaur museum because it was completely empty in there and the girls at the desk desperately wanted us to stay. But our time was limited so we slunk away and headed for the museum.

We spent a lovely couple of hours at a very neat dinosaur museum, letting the kids run through the displays and outdoor patio.  We let the kids browse the gift shop and I chatted with the people at the desk.  We found out we were only about 20 minutes away from the actual dinosaur digging site and that it closed in 40 minutes.  Em and I realized that we probably wouldn't have a chance to visit there in the morning (when I said whirlwind, I really meant whirlwind) so we hopped into the cars and sped out there as fast as our little Sienna minivans could take us.  Legally, that is.

I was afraid that we would have no time to see anything fun, but as it turned out, 15 minutes was exactly how long we needed to see a great site at Dinosaur National Monument and be completely satisfied with our journey.  There's an ancient river bed there that trapped a lot of dinosaurs once upon a time.  A bazillion years later the riverbed was lifted up as a mountain was formed so the side of this mountain is absolutely covered in dinosaur bones.  The paleontologists decided it would be just as easy to just erect a building around the bones as it would be to excavate them, and so there is this cool place to go see the site.  And 15 minutes is plenty of time to enjoy what is there.

After we left the monument, we headed to our hotel.  It was perfect.  Very comfortable, and everything about it, including the pool, was kind of tiny.  I think it was even called a "Microtel" because it was just small.  But since there seemed to be very few visitors, we had the pool to ourselves.  The kids had great fun creating some type of sporting event in the pool while Emily and I soaked our bones in the hot tub.  What more could we want?

We had to head home pretty much first thing in the morning, after we took advantage of the hotel breakfast.  Those boys can put some serious food away.  I was impressed.

Even though it was just one night away and we didn't exactly go on a grand tour, we had a great time.  Any time I get with Emily makes my life better.  She has these four wonderful boys who give my boy (and his sister too) a whole flock of brothers.  I can't imagine life without them.  And I can heartily recommend Vernal as a vacation destination.  It is quiet, clean, and really really not crowded, and we had fun!

Spring BREAK - The Beginning

I am finding that the older my kids get the more I look forward to breaks from school.  The breaks used to be the scariest because I felt like there were these endless empty days with little little kids wanting me to entertain them and feed them and get stuff for them constantly.  Actually....that's still kind of how things are.  It's just that the kids aren't quite so little and we're all exhausted from have very busy schedules with lots of homework time and cello practicing.  We really need the breaks.  Plus I'm starting to see that kids grow up rather quickly after all and I enjoy the time I get with them.

Despite the fact that we had no big plans for one of those classic Spring Break awesome vacations, we had a really fun week together.  Day 1 may have been the best, actually.  On Monday, I took the kids to the new aquarium for the first time.  It turned out that some of our old passes were still good for some weird reason, and so we only had to pay for Skippidy to get in.  Seeing as how it would have cost us almost $60 to get in, I felt that this was a pretty good deal and made me feel that we could even handle paying $5 for a photo booth session on top of the $12.95 admission price.  We piled in the car in the morning, turned on music we all love to sing to (this would include selections ranging from Katy Perry's Roar to Hugh Jackman's OHHHHklahoma!) and all of us, even the 12 year old boy, sang along at the top of our lungs.  We thoroughly enjoyed the aquarium.

By the time we were hungry for lunch I thought hey...we're so far south we can go to IKEA for lunch!  Cheap Meatballs! I thought we could get an inexpensive little lunch together but guess what.  My kids have never eaten at a cafeteria-style place before.  They were pretty excited to each get their own tray and make selections along the way which actually began to pile up.  Couldn't resist a dessert, which I noticed were placed at the START of the line.  Cap got a salmon salad...and mashed potatoes...and a roll...and ate half my meatballs.  Skippidy also got salmon and Bitty got ribs with all the sides.  Holy cow.  Not only was our lunch about double what I was thinking, but we had so much food that the cashier's eyes about popped out of her head.  Never fear, we Preslars could handle it.  We ate just about everything.  Impressive AND alarming.

After IKEA we were so far south I though...hey, Swig is just in Lehi, let's go to Swig!  (If you don't know what this is, you are missing out.  It's like a drink-buffet.  I recommend the Dirty Diet Coke which is Diet Coke with Coconut Syrup, and I also recently tried the Raspberry Dream which is Diet Dr. Pepper with Raspberry Syrup and Coconut Cream.  Oh MAMA it is tasty.)  I know, we had already been to IKEA but....it's spring break!  Why not.  The kids were pretty darn pooped and on the way home instead of singing our hearts out everybody took a nap.

The Drama Bug Bites Bitty

When we got a notice last fall that there was going to be a school play with rehearsals held in the afternoons twice a week, my heart kind of sank.  Cap had done an after-school-rehearsals play in 5th grade and it made his homework life really tough.  And I knew that Bitty was going to want to do this.  But how could I say no?  Obviously I couldn't.  So as soon as she saw the notice and approached me with shining please-please-please-let-me puppy dog eyes of course I said yes.  And guess what.  She loved absolutely every minute of it.  Never once did she come home sad, tired or frustrated from a rehearsal.  In fact, she came home with energy and joy, basically totally adrenalized.  Her BEST homework nights happened on play practice nights.  It was AWESOME.

The play was perfect for a grade school group.  It was basically an ensemble piece teaching the audience everything you need to do in order to behave more like a child.  This included instructions for how to be a picky eater, how to fight with your siblings in the car and how to let your mom know that you're bored.  It was clever and quite funny, and made life easy on us because there were no sets to create or costumes to labor over.  It was quite lovely.  Cap and Skippidy loved it - they both saw it once at school and then came to both nights of the performance.  They seemed to know the words to the songs by the end of the week just as well as Bitty did.  And if she gets this happy and cooperative through being in plays, then I can't wait for the next one.

Decadence

Last week I hosted my fourth and final Teacher Appreciation Week. Yes, that's right, I said FINAL.  I actually really love putting on Teacher Appreciation Week, though I still can't quite figure out how that became my job four years ago.  I love feeding and pampering and treating the wonderful teachers at our school.  And as much as I love it, I am also exhausted by it.  It's so much work and effort, even for just one expression of appreciation each day.  I've been very happy to have found a willing mom to take my place next year.

One of the ways I treated the teachers this year was this great day where I arranged for 10 minute massages for the teachers on one side of the faculty room and on the other, a chocolate fountain surrounded by platters of fruit and cake and pretzels to dip.  The teachers seemed to love it and hovered there for quite a while both before and after their massages.  I didn't want to run short, so I made sure I had plenty of chocolate. As per usual, I slightly overdid it.  I'm a chronic overdo-er.  Except on the days when I'm a total and complete underdo-er.  It's extremely rare for me to be a just-righter.

The kids got a glimpse of the chocolate fountain which I had borrowed from a friend.  They watched as I put the pieces together and got it ready to take to school.  They begged for a chance to use it themselves.  At the end of the school day I discovered that cleaning a chocolate fountain should have been assigned as one of the tasks of Hercules.  It was not easy.  And I thought that perhaps the kids would be satisfied by dipping fruit into a bowl of melted chocolate instead of me having to reset the whole fountain business.  Oh dear...haven't I been a parent for quite some time now?  Shouldn't I have known better?  I should have.  The kids let me know that I had PROMISED the use of the fountain and that NO INDEED would dipping in a bowl of chocolate be in any way the same.  Oh brother, I was going to have to clean it up again.  (I would like to insert here the fact that my children let me know these things very politely with good manners and decorum.) (Mostly.)

Troy and I decided that if we were going to have a chocolate fountain we might as well really enjoy it and spread the love, so we called some friends whom we knew might be game for a spontaneous, school-night, later-than-it-should-have-been invitation to come gorge themselves on chocolate.  With a little fruit on the side.

The resulting party was just....so chocolatey.  It's fun making a kid's fondest dreams come true.  Here, come drink from this flowing fount of candy.

Don't Eat My Eggs!

On any given morning in the Preslar household you may hear someone shout, just as they go walking out the door, "Don't Eat My Eggs!" You'll look around for the eggs and see there are none in sight. And you'll be confused.

This may seem a little strange. And....it is.  I'll give you that.  But you should know that it is a fond farewell and expression of love and also another method of teasing me. Troy insisted that I blog about it so that we always remember how this phrase came to be.

Not too long ago, probably in the fall, I had made scrambled eggs for breakfast.  As is usually the case on a busy school day morning, I had time to make the eggs and I had time to serve the eggs but did not have time to eat any myself. I was busy doing the hustling and bustling that moms always seem to be doing.  My delicious eggs sat there on their pedestal of buttered wheat toast just waiting for me.  The time got closer for the kids to get out the door and still I hadn't had a bite.  Finally I had to leave them there while I quickly walked my brood to school.  Troy was still home and after we had our family prayer and buttoned up coats, he sweetly called to us as we stepped out the door, "I love you!"  His little daughters each sang out as they stepped through the doorway, "I love you too, daddy!" and "I love you so much too, daddy!" Then it was my turn to walk out, and I turned as well but what did I call out? I love you too? Nope. It was the now infamous, "Don't eat my eggs!"

After a moment of disgust at my lack of returned affection Troy started laugh and then I did too and decided to quickly reassure him that "Don't Eat My Eggs" is just a little euphemism for "I Love You" and he had just misunderstood me.  The kids found this to be riotously funny and have been shouting it out periodically ever since.  Just for the record, Troy did very kindly leave my eggs alone and I enjoyed a very tasty if slightly room-temperature breakfast upon my return.

Hey Troy, like I said, DON'T EAT MY EGGS.

OHHHHH....Klahoma!

I am sure I have mentioned in the past that my mother raised me on many the Broadway Musical.  My childhood was filled with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Cats and The King and I and The Fantasticks and West Side Story and....the list goes on.  And on and on.  So many that we just loved.  Being a very serious Spotify user, I created a playlist of some of my favorite songs from my favorite musicals.  I started with the basics - Oliver, The Music Man....and pretty soon I had a playlist with over 300 songs on it and it's still growing.  I have loved musicals, that is for sure. When I found out that a nearby junior high school was going to be performing Oklahoma, I had the immediate desire to go see it, despite the fact that it was a Jr. High production.  I had heard that the annual musical coming out of this school was pretty darn impressive compared to most Jr. High material.  And as it turned out, we knew several of the kids performing in the show, in fact the son of some of my closest friends had a leading role and they had extra tickets one night.  I talked Bitty into going with me.  Cap had already seen the play - his sixth grade had been invited to attend as a field trip and he didn't really want to see it again.  I have high hopes of Bitty following in my footsteps as a musical-fan, so I talked her into joining me.

The show really was very well done and I was quite impressed with the young singers.  Of course, they really were quite young so those singing pipes had a ways to go, but we really had a good time.  I love going on dates with Bitty, partly because she just blossoms when she gets one-on-one time with a parent.  I think I've mentioned that before.  It's such a treat.  And she followed the story and listened to the music a lot more closely than I expected her to.  In fact, as we were driving home she was asking about some of the songs and I felt it was time to let her know that Hugh Jackman, Wolverine Himself, had performed the part of Curly.  At first she thought I meant that that very evening Hugh Jackman had been there singing and she asked me, "Does he even GO to that school?" I quickly let her know that Hugh Jackman is a bit older than her father and is from Australia.  No, we did not see him sing that night.  What I meant was that he sang that role at one point.  In 1999 in London, not to put too fine a point on it.  I found the soundtrack on Spotify and let her listen to Hugh belting out about beautiful mornings as we drove home.  She ate it up.

I decided that she might enjoy seeing the video of that 1999 London production, and it turned out to be harder to get my hands on than I thought.  I was very happy to find a used copy of the play on DVD through Amazon and quickly bought it.  When it arrived I put it on for Bitty and even though I knew she enjoyed the music I wasn't expecting her to sit through the entire play and then sit through it again a couple of days later.  Even Cap was drawn in and watched much of it, and both of them have been heard singing bits and pieces of it from time to time.  Bitty even has a few whole verses memorized.  It is SO awesome.  At least I think so.  I'm sure not everyone would think that finding out your kids are fans of an old musical is that awesome but I sure do.  One person who definitely does not?  That would be Skippidy.  Every time she hears the first strains of "There's a bright golden haze on the medder....." she rolls her eyes and groans and begs us to turn it off.  So I do...and plot what musical to next introduce them to.  Into the Woods?  Peter Pan?  Fiddler on the Roof?  So many choices, so little time!

The Family Nobleman

For several weeks now Cap's 6th grade class has been studying the feudal system.  The teachers even assign everyone a class every Monday based on their grades the previous week - Cap never made it to being The King as a couple of his friends did but he was a noble almost every single week.  (Noble was second to royalty.) Okay, once he was a serf but got upgraded to a knight after he turned in one assignment that had been late.  If nothing else, the program provided a most excellent motivation for getting homework done and done well.

The culminating event of this eight week period was a feast.  A full-on medieval feast.  The teachers set up the gym with banquet tables and a stone-wall backdrop.  They played music featuring mandolins and the kids even learned a dance.  I took several videos of Cap dancing but because I love and respect him I will not be posting them here.  My sixth grade man would find that rather humiliating.  

After the dancing came the court jesters, otherwise known as a local improv duo who came and performed, playing interactive games with the kids and making everyone belly laugh for a good half hour.  Then the feast began.  Each of the kids had their own goblet, which they had made themselves.  I'm trying to not be biased but seriously Cap's was the best.  His was the only one with 3D claws coming off the sides.  From these fabulous creations the kids drank vast quantities of ginger ale.  The serving wenches poured drinks and brought platters of roasted chicken, bread, cheese and grapes. I was lucky enough to take on that most dignified role of serving wench, though I decided against wearing a corset and mob cap.  I went with jeans and an apron.  I was also lucky enough to be the gal who got to pick up the roasted chickens from the very medieval Costco.  One note - it can be slightly awkward to walk around Costco with a cart loaded with 14 roast chickens.  If you ever do this be prepared to field many witty comments from bystanders.  So witty.  

 It was really fun to watch the kids huzzah and eat with their hands and call for more mead.  But that wasn't what I loved the most.  What I loved the most was Cap. He was really excited for this event and talked a lot about it as the date was approaching.  He really really wanted a costume.  Kids were invited to dress up and he drew me a picture of what he wanted to wear and....I couldn't do it, didn't have anything like it....and....so I decided to just surprise him and rent a costume from the local costume shop.  

You know, I don't know if that's good or bad.  Am I spoiling him or treating him to a really special memory?  I'm going with the latter.  It was so fun.  It wasn't expensive, it was just a simple cloak and feathered cap but....he looked great.  And was so happy.  Well, I say it wasn't expensive but really it could become expensive after all because he adored that cloak and begged me to buy it or pay someone to make one just like it.  So far I haven't given in. But I might be thinking about it just a tiny little bit.  He pretty much wore it for every waking hour of the 24 it was in our care.  Gosh I love that boy of mine.