Spring Break

Spring break actually covers several weeks around here since various schools choose various weeks as their one-week break.  But by some amazing confluence of events, everything we do had a spring break this week.  

I was wondering why I felt so liberated by the concept, since the only major thing I do is teach a co-op class.  Eventually I realized that not having to schlepp kids all over town all week was a major savings of time, not to mention a major savings of gas.  

Of course, Thalia began the week by heading for the Dominican Republic.  Here she is a 7:30am on Sunday, having spent the time after Annie Jr. on Saturday packing up all of her stuff (including things like bedding, towels, toilet paper -- like going to GIrl Scout camp, but in a different country).  Starting the week sleep-deprived -- probably not a great idea.  Oh well.  

If we're friends on Facebook you've got access to the videos the leader has been posting through the week -- I've either shared them or liked them.

The week here has been amazingly warm for the most part.  Early in the week we were taking photos of the redbuds Dad planted a few years ago.  He had dug them up from his yard in Indiana when they were about 2-3 feet tall including root "ball" (actually little trailing bits of roots, not much of a ball at all).  We included Annabeth for perspective, although she's grown quite a bit in the past few months, too -- she's up to about 5 feet tall now.

Lots of messing about with photos, as a matter of fact -- I came up with a new Easter slide show to use as the screen saver on the main computer, I ordered bunches of prints to frame up and use for spring decor.

Much cleaning, much hauling stuff to Goodwill (which has suffered from major traffic jams since everyone seems to have had the same idea), much tossing clutter.  Sewing -- a new pair of pants from the Style Arc Linda pattern and some stretch bengaline.  That should've taken just a couple of hours, but I ran out of thread, went to get some, realized the thread was on sale (woot!  Stock up on basic colors -- I'm low on white after all those aprons and caps from Annie Jr.), decided to wander around and see what else is on sale, which turned out to include picture frames (hey!  Just ordered prints!  What a coincidence!), so all sorts of new clutter has already started to pile up already.

The lawn is mowed, more of last fall's dead leaves pulled out from the shrubbery, more sweet gum balls  picked up from the yard and thrown out.

Annabeth has done a little school work this week.  She's babysat for the neighbors -- usually she and Thalia do this together, but she went solo this week, which was pretty exciting.  And she's been decorating styrofoam Easter eggs which we purchased years ago but never got around to doing anything with.

Now we're on the downward side of the break, of course.  We're having company for the weekend, and Thalia will get home on Sunday evening.  We still have projects we'd planned to complete this week, of course, but the time we have to finish them is winding down. Even if we don't get it all done, though, it's been a good break.