Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Spring Break

My school is on a year-round schedule - which would be awesome if everyone else was too (we're currently the only school in the district on this schedule), but that's another story - so we got three weeks off for spring break instead of the typical week. Instead of going on one big vacation, we chopped the time up into several adventures. Here's a recap:
 We first headed north to Vermont to visit family. We did an egg hunt in my grandparents giant backyard, we had lunch at the famous Moose Deli, we went to a parade with my cousin, challenged my Aunt Kathy to a game of Qwirkle, and played hours of wiffle ball in the yard. Gates and I love how Vermont is a giant playground.


 Next we adventured at home. We went to the Reston Zoo, hunted eggs at several egg hunts, played mini golf, bowled, visited an arcade, and spent a day at Bunnyland where we road tractor peddle bikes and raced ducks with hand water pumps. We spent a day swimming at the local indoor pool - which got all of us excited for our summer pool to open. Easter came and we celebrated and scored lots of fun treats. We even got a visit from the Halsteads from New York - they were literally racing through town for the Cherry Blossom 10k.

Then we went to the National Zoo, drank more than a dozen Slurpees, played at endless parks, and my dad took us to Jumpin' Joeys bounce house. Gates and I were having a ball jumping nonstop. Gates came out of one of the bounce houses and proceeded to drink a ton of water and then sit facing my dad on his lap. As they were chatting, all of the bouncing and large quantity of water caught of with him and Gates threw up directly in my dad's face... yuck. This was a launcher. My dad was covered from his hair to his waist. Needless to say, we were Jumpin Joey's least popular customers that day and we had to head home. When we got home, my mom opened the door. I'm sure she felt some sympathy for my dad, but it was hard to tell by the volume and length of her laughter. My dad just headed to the shower as Gates walked into our house in a pair of shoes and a diaper. We were definitely a sight to behold.
My dad was guest lecturing at a school in Pennsylvania so we decided to head north with him for a day and tour the Turkey Hill Ice Cream Factory. From the minute you arrive it's all the free ice cream you can eat. Which sounds awesome until about the second dish...and then you could care less and just enjoy the activities. We made our own ice cream commercial, concocted our own ice cream flavor, jumped in a ball pit, road in an ice cream truck, milked a pretend cow, played in a freezer - really, if it had to do with ice cream, we got to do it.
We capped the evening off with a visit to a local diner. This diner was frozen in the 1930's. Everything, including the people, looked like they were from the 1930's. It was one of the coolest places we've ever seen. We chatted with one of the local guys who was probably 186 years old (I'm just guessing). He was so kind and bought me and my brother each a fire truck from the pharmacy store attached to the diner. It was a perfect way to end our day. We'd highly recommend the whole experience.
Finally my grandparents visited from Utah. We did daily egg hunts to find prizes - the BEST kind of egg hunts, flew kites, went on a bike ride, went to the trampoline park where my grandpa played crack the egg with me - check out how high he bounced me! Then we all dove in the foam pit - getting in is much easier than getting out. We even got to go to a National's game and sit about 20 rows back on the third base line! Though cracking peanuts was definitely the most exciting part for me and my brother.
From beginning to end, spring break was full of  fun people and fun activities. Now back to school where I'll dream about the pool and summer break!