It’s Spring Break at our House

That wonderful event that all school age children love has arrived at our house, SPRING BREAK! For the next week, the kids are out of school.

In our house that means four kids are now available to assist their parental units in whatever tasks, deemed appropriate, for the development of their character. Parental speak for completing chores, cleaning rooms, and fluffing the parents pillows! Yea right! It is nice to dream.

This week has caused some confusion for my 5 year old. Since she is out of school, she would like to know when I get Spring Break! I can’t wait to see my boss on Monday morning. (With the economy the way, it is I’m sure it might not be the right time to ask!) Nevertheless, my darling daughter has hit on a concept that I think should be explored. With vision like this why can’t they wave the constitutional requirement that the President has to be thrity six years old. I wonder how she can do in Economics.)

We are scheduling the week of sleepovers, social events, mall trips, movies, travel to places, activities, and veg time to have a great break. If the scheduling is right, I may see each child every other day as they spend time with their extended families. We use that term for the families of the friends they hang out with. We joke that my son has three hyphenated last names since the families of his buddies kind of claim him as one of their own. (I wonder if we can work that all the way through college? Oops! There I go using my out loud voice again.)

Spring Break is also the time that all children believe that everything is possible. The question was asked; Can’t we just get in the car and ride to see the grandparents? To add context to the discussion we live pretty close to the geographic center of the United States. The relatives live in the far Northeastern corner of the United States and on the East Coast. Another option was proposed by my eight-year-old son. He decided he would like to go to California for the break. We used the chance to do map reading and mapquesting to determine it would only take about 27 hours to get there. Mr. Math was on top of that saying, “it is only 1 and 3/24th of a day to get there.”(Parental pride in the math skill!) (Parental shock in realizing that he believes that I can drive that many hours without bathroom stops and sleep to arrive on the coast!) By the way, I love the sense of adventure that is developing.

We are getting ready for day two of Spring Break. The kids are using the opportunity to sleep in since most stayed up late on the first full day of Spring Break.