Spring Break

Spring break is a great time to take a vacation. No school to hold us here, the weather is warming up, flowers are popping up, grass is greening up, the torture of winter is fading and the joy of summer is right on the horizon. All of this creates a strong desire to break from the hum drum of everyday life, go outside, relax, soak up some sun and have a little fun. This could be known as spring fever. I always get it, bad.

So usually starting about about 4 days after the kids go back to school after Christmas break I start dreaming about spring and plotting my spring break vacation. I enjoy the fall and the holiday excitement, and even the first week or so of snow. But when Christmas break is over, the kids go back to school, and life settles into the long depressing dark days of winter dreams of spring is what keeps me partially sane. The first 4 or so days aren't too bad. I am too busy to look out the window and notice the snow and lack of sun. I have to put away all the Christmas stuff, do 3 weeks of laundry, find a spot for all the new toys, and discreetly throw out all the old ones. This takes at least 2 days usually 3. Then I clean the fridge, I get out all the leftover holiday food and treats. I inspect it all for mold. Anything mold free I taste to make sure it still tastes OK, when I have tasted about half of it I put the rest back in the fridge or freeze it for later use. If I find mold, or slime or some other clue that the food may be rotting, I have to then ascertain if is tasty enough to risk food poison by eating it. If so I eat it, if not I throw it. This takes the better part of a day.

So 4 days into the New Year reality hits. My bare fridge necessitates a trip to the grocery store, which necessitates that I get dressed in something other than sweats. When I am laying on the bed trying to button my jeans I realized that my quest for a clean fridge has postponed my New Years resolutions. I have to stop eating and start exercising. That is when the depression starts to kick in and I begin dreaming of spring. Over the next 3 months the tension builds until my hate of winter and excitement for spring are almost too much to handle and something has to give.

Luckily right about then we get some warm days and spring is on the horizon. I start some serious spring preparations. So that is where we are right now. Spring break. I spent all last week working in my yard, I got my garden all tilled up, I cleaned out my flower beds, power raked my grass, planted some bushes, mowed and fertilized. So I was already for my spring break vacation. We have a trip to Disneyland planned for the last week of April and my husband is in the middle of a big project at work so it couldn't be anything to elaborate, costly or involve my husband. So I choose to take the kids to Grandma and Grandpa's. A week, which is actually only 4 days thanks to soccer and the school district robbing us of our full week vacation, at Grandma's is the perfect way to relax and cure a bit of spring fever.

Only while the calendar says it is spring break, mother nature does not think so. Monday we had beautiful 70 degree weather. Tuesday a bit of a spring rain. And Wednesday, the first day of spring break, we woke up to a blizzard outside. Snow was flying, roads were slick, the sun was no where in sight and it's light couldn't get through the thick black clouds. We decided to go to Grandma's anyway and hope we didn't slide off the road. Due to my huge lack of will power and inability to say no I am a soccer coach. We had a game scheduled for Wednesday night so we had planned to leave right after that. The thick blanket of snow on the grass and the huge flakes falling relentlessly to the ground made it hard to imagine my 1st grade girls really wanting to play soccer that evening. So I kept checking the Internet to see if games would be cancelled. The message simply said all games were on, dress warmly. Whatever. So I called the sports office. The receptionist said she had just talked to Paul, the director over such things, and he had so far decided to play games as scheduled but she encouraged me to talk to him. So she transferred me. I spoke to him, (he had me on speaker phone which I HATE), I expressed to him my doubt at a very successful soccer game and he hesitantly replied,"Well I guess it isn't looking to good out there." Huge understatement. So he promised he would make a decision in the next half hour. I rushed off to get my oil changed so we could leave as soon as the decision was made.

We left at 2:30 instead of 6:30 so my Spring break was off to a good start. Miraculously we had the best drive ever. No one fought, no one cried, no one threw up or wet their pants. We didn't have to stop and my baby slept most of the way. It snowed for the first 1/2 hour or so but then it quit. Further north they apparently had a lot more rain because we ran into a lot of standing water on the roads, we hydroplaned once but didn't wreck. So all was well. We arrived in good spirits. We don't have anything major planned, just a week of relaxing downtime to celebrate the coming of spring. Of course if the snow would stop we would have something to celebrate.