Spring Break

Let's talk about Spring Break... for three of our kids. Last week was Spring Break... for three of our kids. Here are some of the holidays we celebrated (besides what I already mentioned in my April 9, 2026 post).

April 7 was National No Housework Day. I didn't tell the kids that was the holiday and asked them to clean. Bwah ha ha ha. But I celebrated.

 

April 8 was Draw a Picture of a Bird Day. This is what Nichole created.

She's awesome. I love that I could immediately tell it was a red-tailed hawk. Gorgeous.

 

April 10 was National Siblings Day. I encouraged a couple of my kids to wish each other a Happy that holiday but forgot to wish it to any of my own siblings even though I planned to.

It was also National Farm Animals Day. For dinner the night before, I made red beans and rice and hush puppies and garlic parmesan asparagus. On April 10, we had leftovers (including the beans and rice that had Polish sausage made out of what? Farm animals!) and I made more hush puppies.

This exchange happened while I was making them.

 

Jet: What are the dog things you are making called?

Mom: Hush puppies. 

 

He's so adorable.

 

Spring Break 2025

Spring Break for the kids was from March 31-April 4 plus the weekends before and after.

Spring Break was, as often happens in Utah, a break from Spring. See our snow?

April 1 was April Fool's Day. I told everyone dinner was Fend For Yourselves but I did make "Kool-aid." It was actually Kool-aid. My family never knows from year to year if it's going to be Kool-aid or Jello. I made sure to use air quotes every time I mentioned it that day, though, so it added to "trick."

 

April 2 was National Walking Day. I made sure to get out for a walk by the lake that morning.

I walked around a playground later chasing after Jet. Lucky helped.

It was also Peanut Butter and Jelly Day. Yes, I did go around singing, "Peanut Butter Jelly Time." We had some peanut butter and jelly pretzel snacks. They're like the peanut butter pretzels but with a coating on the outside. Yumm.

 

April 3 was Fish Fingers and Custard Day, World Party Day, and National Burrito Day. Woohoo!

April 4 was Walk Around Things Day. I walked around the store to get groceries and walked around the van to get the groceries.

 

April 5 and 6 were General Conference days. So good.

Jr. Jr. decided to make scones for everybody Saturday morning so with a little help from Dad, he did. He is a sweetie. They both are.

We had our traditional nachos, of course, and General Conference snuggles! April 5 was Love Our Children Day after all.

Saturday night we had our traditional Saturday evening session brownies. We had to start from the middle of course. Don't you love how traditions get started? This has been a tradition for more than 10 years. I blogged about the first time we did it on October 5, 2014.

General Conference wasn't all about food and snuggles. I tried to go in to it with very specific questions and listened for specific answers and I did. It was very personal some of the things the Lord let me know through the Spirit while listening to these speakers. I am so grateful.

 

Lucky got more service in during Spring Break. He twisted free balloon animals for people at the park. 

He came with me one day to tie quilts for Humanitarian Aid.

He was fine. He just likes to make silly faces when I take his picture.

 

Lucky also made a bouquet of balloon flowers for a sister I minister to for her birthday. There was enough that she was able to separate the flowers for her family members. They enjoyed that.

 

There we go. Spring Break 2025.

Late Night Shenanigans

Jet's sleep schedule got all out of whack during Spring Break. Well, all the boys' did. They all stayed up too late and slept in too long. There were some late nights with Jet. Sometimes the boys stayed up to watch him, sometimes Jeremy, sometimes me. Sometimes we couldn't stay awake while he was running around in the middle of the night.

Two nights in a row he got up to some mischief- both when he got a hold of my phone.

The first night apparently he turned the camera on on my phone because we found several pictures like this-   

The second night, a text message in the middle of the night woke me. This is how it went.

From my father-in-law: Hi I think Jet might have your phone. We just got a call, Love you

My response: I am so sorry.

My father-in-law: It's not a problem. We were still up. I'm glad there is no problem. Love you

I'm so glad my in-laws have a sense of humor and are understanding.

General Conference Weekend

At the end of Spring Break, we had General Conference Weekend. We thought it would be great to go see the Sage Grouse since that has kind of become a Spring Break tradition.

We got everybody up really early in the morning and headed out. There was a chance of snow so we would turn around and go home if the weather didn't look good. It looked good. All the way through Provo Canyon, all the way past Heber, then all of a sudden it hit. Seriously, just sitting in the van looking out the front window, it was totally clear, when all of a sudden we jumped to hyperspace. Whoa. Snow coming right at us, hard to see the lines on the road, all the vehicles going slowly. We got toward the top of the hill by Jordanelle Reservoir and started losing traction. We had already made the decision that we would abandon our trip if this happened, we just didn't realize it would happen so suddenly. We found a pullout and just hung out listening to audiobooks and the boys played video games on their devices. 

Several snowplows went by and the snow calmed down a little bit. We were able to get to the next exit that thankfully had been plowed, and were able to get on the highway going back the way we came. Once we got down into Heber area again, it was clear all the way back home.

We went home and some of us slept then got up (picked up Nichole as she wanted to sleep instead of seeing the sage grouse), watched General Conference, ate nachos, some of us slept during Conference, and made brownies to start from the middle for the evening session.

O.K. Funny story before we left. My phone was connected to the van speakers via Bluetooth. I turned the van on to warm it up while we got the last of the stuff from inside. I had my audiobook on Libby on my phone in my pocket so I knew it would start playing through the speakers as I buckled Jet in. What I didn't realize is while the boys were sitting there in the van, all of a sudden they would hear, "Beast. Blood everywhere," in a menacing voice through the speakers before I paused my book. We all cracked up.

Sunday, April 7, besides being General Conference, was No Housework Day. Ha! I got up that morning to one child throwing up. So much for World Health Day. I think he was dehydrated because after that morning he was fine the rest of the day. 

Nichole made the comment it seems like somebody always gets sick during General Conference weekend.

It was a good weekend even without sage grouse.

Spring Break 2024

The boys had Spring Break April 1-5.

O.K. So we did celebrate April Fool's Day on April 1.

I put on the menu plan that we were going to have Ogre Stew and Muriel's Pretzel Knots. What we actually had was Italian Bean Soup and Garlic Knots (from A Season of Family Meal Plans), which looked enough like the other dishes. Bwah ha ha. Unfortunately, I think the soup was quite a disappointment to Jr. who had his hopes up for Ogre Stew. Honestly, I prefer Ogre Stew myself. I did traditional gelatin in place of Koolaid again, this time in a pitcher.

A couple of my boys put April Fool's notes on people's backs and I found one in my hair at one point.

The next morning as we were getting Jeremy ready for work, we found one more April Fool's prank we missed the night before.

April 2 was Peanut Butter and Jelly Day. It was also a Palindrome Day. 4-2-24

 

April 3 was Fish Fingers and Custard Day. We had our traditional dinner and watched several episodes of Doctor Who.

Jr. Jr. rationalized video games by naming a fish, "fingers and custerd," in Minecraft. "This is my fish, fingers and custerd."

 

April 4 was Walk Around Things Day. I went out for a walk along the lake starting in Vineyard and since it was Walk Around Things Day, I had to walk all the way up to Vineyard Beach, which by the way isn't much of a beach right now because of how much water there is in the lake (yay), and around the Geneva Cooling Ponds by Lindon Marina. Then I walked back and it was such a pleasant walk. It really was. I took our new camera and got to see some birds for the first time this year. Oh, I love walking and birding.

It was also National Burrito Day so we had burritos and Spanish Rice for dinner.

April 5 was First Contact Day. The boys saw it on the calendar and wondered what it was so I explained to them how, "A guy built a rocket and flew up into space on April 5... what year does it say?" "2063." "Yeah, 2063. And Vulcans saw it and made first contact with the humans." The boys were a bit confused and finally asked, "Is that from a movie or something?" "It's a Star Trek thing," I explained. So now they know.

Spring Break 2023

We didn't really have Spring for Spring Break. Our Winter went into April this year so we did mostly indoor things during Spring Break.

 

The kids learned how to play Phase 10.

We had some library time.

We did drive around one day and when we got home there was a spotted towhee in our front yard. Nichole got pictures.

Jr. found a recipe in my Shelf Cooking 101 book and wanted to try it out so we used ingredients we found around the house to make it. Yummm. I want them again.

April 3 was Fish Fingers and Custard Day.

April 6 was National Burrito Day and National Carbonara Day.

April 8 was Draw a Picture of a Bird Day. 

Spring Break

For Spring Break this year, Jeremy's parents came to visit. I love them. They told us to plan things we wanted to do so we did. We dragged them out early in the morning to see the sage grouse. It was cold but worth it. It's becoming a fun tradition during Spring Break.

Everybody say, "Sage Grouse."

Jet was very happy when he got to get out and run around. He had so much fun and got upset anytime I tried to put him back in the van. Finally, we had the other side of the van open and he kept pushing me and dragging me until I got in, then he climbed up into the van and over me to get in his seat. Sigh. Toddlers.

Another day of Spring Break we watched a movie with Grandma and Grandpa then had burritos for National Burrito Day on April 7. 

 

Grandpa and Jeremy took the four older kids to Pioneer Book in Provo to get some new (to them) books. While they were there, I told Jeremy to get pictures of the blossoms on Center Street. He did. 

He also brought me a book, The Ultimate Book of Baking, which is huge. We joked that it's thicker than a Brandon Sanderson book. Jr. picked one of those.

Grandpa said the kids were very chatty on the way there but very quiet on the way back because they were all reading.

Jr. Jr. and Lucky made a fort in the living room that day.

The last day before Grandma and Grandpa left we made a long drive out past Delta to U-Dig Fossils Trilobite Quarry. 

We spent 2 hours splitting rocks and collecting fossils to take home. That was so fun. We could have spent longer but we didn't need to and now we have fossils to last us for many years.

At the end of our time, as others were sorting through rocks deciding what to keep and if pieces could be broken off to make a smaller amount to carry, Jet decided it was time to sit down and throw dirt all around and all over himself. Grandma and Grandpa got a big kick out of seeing where his face got wet and muddy looking and enjoyed reminiscing about Jeremy eating dirt when he was little. Ah, family history.

We got home too late that night to celebrate National Unicorn Day, April 9, with Unicorn Swirl ice cream so we had some with our at-home potluck the next day.

That next day I walked home from church again. It's just easier when choir is right after church. Of course it was the day I decided to wear short sleeves without a jacket and it was starting to get cold again. But the blossoms in the neighborhood were sure pretty. Nichole and I have been sneezing a lot lately. Ah, Spring. Interestingly, we had snow for the next two days in a row after that.

Our bird feeding station didn't fair so well in the storms.

The day I walked home from church, April 10, was also Encourage a Young Writer Day. Nichole had some writing to do and we encouraged her. She was happy with how it turned out.

 

So that is how Spring Break went for us this year. We enjoyed our time with Jeremy's parents. They were able to watch Jr. give a talk in Sacrament Meeting on Sunday then headed out to spend time with Jeremy's brother and his wife and the newest grandbaby in Idaho. I love family.