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.

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.

General Conference Weekend

General Conference Weekend started with a... SLUMBER PARTY!!! Because it also was the beginning of Spring Break! So Friday for after school snack we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because April 2 was National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day. Later we ate nachos while watching the new Croods movie. 

For our slumber party, the kids fought. Eventually Nichole and Jr. went to sleep in their own beds. In the morning, we had family prayer together then Nichole went back to bed and Jr. stayed out to sleep in the living room.

A slumber party was also appropriate because Saturday, April 3, was World Party Day and International Pillow Fight Day. The boys rationalized video games because Wii Party fits in with World Party. Sigh.

It was also Handmade Day which was great because Nichole finished decorating her General Conference Journal which she used to take notes during the first two sessions (and the other sessions on Sunday).

During Conference, Sister Joy D. Jones talked about teaching and nurturing children. And guess what. April 3 is Love Our Children Day. I sure love ours.

Jet was so cute when watching us sustain our leaders. He wanted to be involved with that, too.

 

And as we've celebrated many times, April 3 is Fish Fingers and Custard Day. Yes, I made fish sticks and vanilla pudding for us to eat.

Jr. went solo watching the Priesthood session of Conference. He had to eat popcorn all by himself. Jeremy was on his way home so he listened to the session in the car but got to watch the last talk with Jr. when he got home. They both got "chuckles" then.

Sunday, April 4, was Easter. Lots of Conference talks about the Resurrection. Wonderful. 20 new temples announced including one in Burley, Idaho (personal connection) and one in Eugene, Oregon (personal connection). Wow.

Before Conference and between sessions, Jet and I went for a couple drives. Lucky went with us the first time. We drove in the canyon to see if Bridal Veil Falls was still frozen. Not so much.

 

Conference Bingo (actually called Conference Squares) was fun for the kids again this year. The Primary Presidency dropped off activity pages and smarties that the boys were able to use for their Bingo sheets (and get creative with). Jr. used M&Ms.

Since the Smarties were gone by Saturday afternoon, both Jr. Jr. and Lucky requested jelly beans to be used on Sunday (they both had the same idea at the same time- Lucky mentioned it to me while we were on our drive, Jr. Jr. mentioned it to Jeremy while we were gone). Nichole was taking her own notes so she ate M&Ms while she was at it. Jet was given a Bingo sheet and Cheerios. I would put the Cheerios on his sheet and he would take them off and eat them. I was thinking he might copy his brothers as they were putting jelly beans on their sheets but he wasn't interested in that.

 

We got to video call with my parents and a couple of my brothers for Easter and that was so nice. The younger boys enjoyed showing off (sometimes loudly which wasn't so nice). I love family so it was good to have that "face to face" time.

Celebrating the Beginning of April

April 2 was National Burrito Day. It was also National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day.
A couple of us watched that Peanut Butter Jelly Time video with the dancing banana. You know the one I'm talking about.
Our dinner was kind of eclectic with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, burritos, and chicken fajita soup (The Food Nanny Rescues Dinner) which I needed to make because I had some ingredients waiting in the fridge for it.

 April 3 was Fish Fingers and Custard Day. We celebrated the usual way.

Catching Up- April

Lots happened in April, too.  Including Spring Break where we were so busy with things around here, we didn't go on any big trips.

We did celebrate April Fool's Day on April 1. I am amazed that no matter how many times I do the jello instead of Kool-aid trick, I still have kids that fall for it. This year, I put the jello in a pitcher so when the boys tried to pour it out, it wouldn't come. I did mugs for Jeremy and me. It's a nice trick because they still get a treat out of it.

In April, Lucky got to go to a friend's birthday party. I love that the friend's older sister (still younger than my oldest) volunteered to run things for the party. What a great sister. So the kids played games, did some face or hand painting, had treats (made by the mom), and enjoyed present opening. Jeremy and I stayed, just in case we were needed for crowd control, but we really just chatted with the mom most of the time since she's our friend. Lucky had a blast.

April 2 was National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day. Guess what we ate.

April 3 was Fish Fingers and Custard Day. Guess what we ate.

We went to visit our friends in Kaysville during Spring Break and took them cookies to say thanks for their kindness to us last Summer.

My ministering sister brought me daffodils to brighten my day.

Jr. and Jeremy went to see the sage grouse displaying. Nichole and I missed it this year.

We watched General Conference at home and had nachos, of course.  Jr. was able to watch his first Priesthood Session with Jeremy. They enjoyed their time like Nichole and I enjoy our time when we watch the Women's Session.

On Sunday, we had friends over to watch Conference with us.

After Spring Break, plenty more happened.

Our upstairs neighbor texted us to say, "There's a turkey in the backyard." Yep, a wild turkey hanging out in the backyard. We get some interesting birds here.

Jeremy did a couple sculptures for the 15th anniversary of the Tulip Festival and got a commemorative pin. It's the year for commemorative pins.  He also got commemorative pins for Orem's Centennial.

One sculpture was in April. The other was in May, so stay tuned for that.

April 18 was National Velociraptor Awareness Day.  We took that opportunity to start Nichole on the Jurassic Park movies. Tee Hee.

Jeremy received VIP tickets to FanX in Salt Lake City. We got pins there, too. Lucky went with us the first day and dressed up.  Just Jeremy and I went the second day and dressed up.
Lucky did pretty well that first day. We figured he is just the right age.  He stayed with us and didn't run off. He did well in the one panel I cared about going to- Warwick Davis. Since we had VIP tickets, we got a nice close seat.  Lucky and I talked about different movies Warwick Davis had been in and he enjoyed it.  I always liked Warwick Davis before but through his panel I came to like him even more.  He's a great guy, funny, nice, and he didn't say anything that made me cringe or need to cover my son's (or my) ears.

After a while, when we couldn't find activities that Lucky wanted to do, we decided to reward him for being so well behaved. So he and I picked Nichole up from the bus after school and we all went to a park so Lucky could play on the playground and Nichole and I could chat.

The second day, Jeremy made a balloon costume of a cyberman to wear. I went easy and borrowed a Harry Potter robe and scarf from Nichole. We made sure to get pictures with the Tardis. At the end of the day, we ran into friends and got pictures with Jeremy and ZZ.

I was done by the end of those two days. I enjoyed it but I was done.

April 21 was Easter. Church was wonderful and dinner was nice.

For FHE the day after, we had an Easter egg hunt with our upstairs neighbors.

April 26 was National Pretzel Day. We had pretzels dipped in cheese sauce.

We got out and did our short-eared owl survey again in April. We didn't see any short-eared owls but Jeremy and I did see some burrowing owls.

Nichole got free tickets to an orchestra concert so she and I took a mother-daughter evening and enjoyed the music together.

Jeremy was asked to teach at a balloon jam in Salt Lake.  His subject- how to break a world record.

So there was plenty we did in April and now I'm done blogging about it.  On to May.