Spring Break

Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go...

I woke up at 6:15 this morning.  On the first school day of Spring Break, when hopefully Big and Little will sleep in.  What was I thinking?  Obviously, I *wasn't* thinking.  Or maybe I was thinking too much since my to-do-list for today is way too long and seems to keep growing every minute.  Writing this blog post wasn't on that list, by the way.

Something that is high on the list is packing for a short visit to the grandparents'.  Fortunately, both sets live within 90 minutes of each other so knocking them both off with a single trip North is totally doable.  Big and Little are excited.  Little already started the process, as you can see -

We drive a minivan, but let's be realistic.  I managed to help her whittle things down to what she can fit in the backpack, plus the pillow pet in the bottom right hand corner (the purple blob...if you turn it over, it's actually a light up unicorn, a must have for any over night trip!).  She was surprisingly agreeable about it.  Oh, did you notice that there aren't actually any clothes in that pile?  At least not for a human-sized child, since there are a couple of cute doll outfits included.  My kids have their priorities.  Clothes, toiletries, basically useful stuff, are Mom's problem.

I'm ready on that front, though.  In anticipation of the trip, I spent a good part of the weekend hauling up the boxes of spring/summer clothes from the basement closet, unpacking them, and sorting the stuff into the girls' dresser drawers and closets.  You know this means we'll have snow next week.  That's ok, since  I left the boxes that I repacked with the fall/winter stuff upstairs for easy access.  I'll wait until July to bring them down two flights and force them into the closet.  And all the while I'll remind myself that's not laziness, it's being prepared.

Speaking of weather related things, did you have a lot of snow days in your school district?  We missed 11 this year.  Just found out last Friday that the school board has voted to extend the year one more day to account for all of them.  We now get out of school on Wednesday, June 25.  Crazy, if you ask me.  Since the original school calendar had the final day as Friday 6/20, everybody has vacation and camp and other plans that next week.  School is going to be a ghost town.  Big and Little can be the Sheriff and Deputy, because we're here so they're going.  Another entry on my long list of "Mother of the Year" qualities.

It's going to be a beautiful day in the neighborhood today.  I plan to try and spend some of it outdoors, exhausting...I mean entertaining!...the kids.  Maybe knock a few things off my to-do-list in the process since a big one is all new photographs of the jewelry and I'm doing that outside.  Big was an amazing photographers helper yesterday when I got started.  Here's a sample, using the pendant she designed for me -

But if I don't get much done, though, that's ok, too.  It'll all still be there later but Big and Little won't always be home for Spring Break wanting to hang out with me.  I'm going to grab onto that while I still can.

Have a wonderful week!