Breakin'

Our Easter Break was pretty tame this year.

“Easter Break” is what we call Spring Break.  We do Easter, not Fort Lauderdale, which is what I immediately think of when I hear the term “Spring Break.”  Like we’re all running around in bathing suits, looking for the next beer bong.

Which was totally not my college experience, by the way.  One Spring Break my roommate and I visited my grandmother and great aunts in Florida for a week and the wildest thing we did was mini golf.  Another year, a group of us crammed into two hotel rooms in the Bahamas for four days, only to become sick on bad shellfish.  This led to a memorable 24-hour drive home with five girls in a small car.

This year, our family sort of just hung around and did life.  I skipped writing and social media, and caught up with sleep and errands.  My husband went to work because he is a cog in the machine, and the kids and I did stuff that we don’t normally do.

1. Movies.  We saw Insurgent.  It was pretty good, except for when I laughed out loud at a character’s hokey soliloquy, alarming my kids who were disgusted with my levity during this particular dramatic production about the post-apocalyptic world.  We get it, entertainment world.  The future sucks.

2. Basketball.  My daughter plays basketball.  Forever and ever, amen.  This is not new, but this break she had the first tournament in a new season.  We are one of those sports families. 

3. Lunch and shopping. I dragged the kids away from their iDevices/gaming consoles and took them out for burgers and shopping.  They each had a bajillion dollars in gift cards and birthday money, and they needed to buy junk.  They were happy.

4. Stay up late. The kids, not me.  I am a shameless early-to-bed person.  I’m not sure when the kids went to bed during the break.  I sort of lazily yell “don’t stay up late” and they respond “okay” and I take to my bed and this is how it went every night.

5. Easter with friends.  Easter was also the birthday of a good friend, so we descended on their house for Easter brunch and birthday festivities.  I brought two gifts: my famous solo rendition of “Happy Birthday” and a bottle of pink booze.  I am no solo vocalist, and we drank all the booze.  I am not the best at birthdays.

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I asked the kids what they wished we’d done on break, and they had a hard time coming up with ideas.  I guess they don’t realize that Spring Break is a thing.  I’m not going to try to convince them otherwise – maybe during college they’ll just come home instead of go wild abroad.  A mother can dream.  Here are the things they wished they’d done on break:

1. Exercise.  My son came up with this one.  He said he planned on starting a running program for himself over break.  I admire his intention, and am saddened by his similarity to me in the fitness realm.  He did play catch with a friend and rebounded for his sister's free throws, and walked around the neighborhood a little, lest you think my teen is a lazy bum.

2. Vacation.  They both said they wished we’d gone on vacation somewhere.  When I asked where, they couldn’t think of a place to go.  I bit my tongue when “Disney World” flew into my head.  Disney World is that kind of place that every family visits on Spring Break – once.

3. Visit family.  My husband and I had decided that we weren’t going to travel to see family this Easter, and because of the basketball tournament, we couldn’t very well host a big family holiday celebration, either.  So we sort of said no to family this year.  The kids noticed.

4. Get homework done earlier.  Aw, these kids.  They want to do good things.  They were both doing work the morning before they went back to school.  Procrastination lives here.

5. Sleepover. This, from my daughter.  What is it about tweens?  Sleepovers are king, and when they don’t happen during a break, it’s like there is a tear in the fabric of the universe.

What did you do on break?

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This post inspired by:

Prompt #6: Spring Break!  Ask your child to name 10 things (or less) they’d like to do for Spring Break.  Share the list with us and tell us…will their dreams come true?