Spring Break

So I know there are a lot of moms who dread having their kids out of school for an extended period of time, but I LOVE it.  In fact, I kind of hate sending them to school at all.  I know that it is the right thing for them and all of us right now, and they love school - so don't tell them that it is a hassle, because my resolve isn't that good.  It wouldn't take much whining/complaining for me to let them stay home.  

I know we probably should have done all kinds of educational, fun, memorable things while we had the extra time, but mostly we just hung around at home.  

Here are a few of my highlights:

• Sleeping in.  I can count on one hand the number of times my oldest has slept past 7 o'clock since he was six-months-old.  Occasionally the younger ones sleep until 8, but not often.  So they didn't actually sleep, but they didn't need me to get them breakfast or find clean school pants, so they went downstairs and read books to each other for an hour.  When I wandered downstairs at 7:45, they were coloring pictures to give to their stuffed cats.  

• Built-in friends.  By the time we finished breakfast on the first day my oldest was sitting on the heater in the kitchen and the second was sitting on the heater in the living room.  Baby Cakes ran back and forth from each room, laughing and waving her arms - SOO excited that the boys were staying home to play with her. She likes them better than she likes me.

Snack time out of kitty dishes.  Have I mentioned all my children are obsessed with cats?  It's bizarre.

• The help.  OH, the help!  Just when I get them trained really well and they are old enough to follow complicated directions, I have to send them away.  Last week I got to shut the door when I went to the bathroom, because the boys can keep a small child entertained; I got all the laundry done, because the boys sorted and carried baskets down to the laundry room for me (this gets increasingly more complicated as the belly gets bigger and the baby can't stand me walking out of the room without her); I got all the games sorted through, because the boys knew where all the pieces went.  AND, the major accomplishment, we re-arranged the bed rooms and the toy room and got the house cleaned.  It was awesome.  

So this week when school started again was sad for us girls who had to stay home without them.  Lil' girl asked for her brothers every day and the baby didn't really start smiling until around 2:30 in the afternoons. (Coincidentally, when we walk over to the school to pick up the boys.)  

p.s.  Part of the awesomeness that was Spring Break is due to my most genius parenting idea yet:  The kids can earn a ticket for 15 minutes of computer time by reading three books to one of their siblings.  So they are forever asking each other if they can read stories, and then inviting the other one to watch while they play computer games.  I have no idea why it is fun to watch someone else play the computer, but my kids love it. They spend most of their time at pbskids.org, coolmath.com, or playing this Portal/Mario mashup that Husband found.