Spring Break

Last year we planned to spend our Spring break in Chicago and Detroit. Wendy's kids always get a week off of school the week before Easter. We had spent Spring break with them in 2017. When our plans were cancelled last April, I rescheduled the trip  to their Spring  break in 2021, but several months ago I deleted those plans from our calendar as I realized life wasn't going to be normal by Easter. At the moment, the plan is for us to have a shorter visit with them in October. Hopefully those plans will actually take place! Since we cancelled the trip, I wasn't sure how many days I should give my kids off for Spring break. The kids in our neighborhood either attend MCS (Christian school at our church) or the local public school. The public school gave the kids a full week off - from March 31 to April 6. When the neighbors have off and we are trying to do our schoolwork, the doorbell rings many times. I decided to give the kids April 1-6 off. One neighbor rang the doorbell at 10am yesterday. Oliver had told some of his friends on Tuesday that we were doing schoolwork on Wednesday or we would have had

more kids at our door. I tried to help the kids get done a little bit earlier. Oliver and Nadia were done before we had lunch at 11:30, and Ian was done at 12:30. We have 18 days left of school for the year. We'll hit 180 days before then, but I will have documented 187 days by April 30. One of those 18 days is a field trip day so we really only have 17 days left of doing our usual subjects. 

Sometimes we start listening to a book and decide we don't want to finish it. We've usually loved books by Gloria Whalen, but Ian wasn't liking The Hedge School. We gave Hello, Universe a whirl because it won a Newbery Award, but Nadia didn't want to finish that one. The kids are enjoying a Newbery Honor award recipient - Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. I recently had counted how many Newbery award books we've read so far. They've listened to 51 of the Newbery award winners. Nadia and Ian read one of them (New Kid) on their own, and Nadia read three others on her own, which means Nadia has either read or listened to 55 of the 100 Newberry award winners. There are more than 300 Newbery Honor books.

We've read at least 57 of them together, Nadia and Ian each read another one, and Nadia read five more independently which puts her at 63 total. I have picked out some Newbery award and Newbery Honor books for us to listen to together in the coming months as well as for Nadia and Ian to read independently. We shall see how many we end up reading over the years to come. 

Today we're headed to an indoor entertainment venue (trampoline park, laser tag, etc.), which is something I've avoided for several months due to COVID. I wasn't sure when to resume such activities. When Tab said they were going, I decided we'd join them. We're also bringing two kids from our neighborhood. I did see yesterday that the state historical sites, which have all been closed for over a year, are at least partially reopening the end of April so that's a good sign that things are moving back in the right direction. And my sister called yesterday to ask if they could join us for a few hours on Sunday! We haven't seen any relatives since November, and no relatives have met Milo yet. This means I can finally give two nephews and one niece their Christmas gifts that have been under my bed for months; I guess we'll call them Easter gifts, ha ha!

P.S. Milo didn't get the memo that Spring break started today. He woke Ian up at 6:50, which meant Ian woke me up as well.