Spring Break

Joel just had spring break. We couldn't go anywhere really, even within a few hours' drive because I'm (supposedly) close to going into labor. I would hate to have my water break in downtown Chicago, but it sure would be an adventure.

I decided we would have fun this week, regardless of the impracticality of traveling. Having all of us home all day would have been aggravating if we were reduced to sitting and staring at the walls.

Everett and Ashley entertained each other, as always.

Here they are pretending to be babies.

We read lots of library books, and I think Everett has his favorites memorized now.

Jumping onto a huge pile of pillows was always a treat. . .

And the weather has been in the fifties, so we went on lots of very long walks. I was hoping these walks would help induce labor (no such luck). However, the kids sure enjoyed them, so that was good enough for me.

We took our umbrella strollers instead of our double because I knew the kids would want to push them and I wanted to get their little legs moving. Legs moving = good night-time sleepers.

Ashley walked for a long time. It was fun to see her roaming down the trails even though she was slowing us down.

The kids always have to stop to watch the ducks and geese. In the spring the geese have new goslings and are pretty nasty to be around, but this month they were in the water and reasonably mellow. I'm not a huge fan of geese.

I think the kids had the most fun yesterday when we went swimming. Notre Dame has a great pool and family swim time a few days during the week (the pool we swam in was small and had all the pool toys in it. . .and felt as warm as a bathtub). We had never gone before, and after I saw how much fun it was for the kids and how it was much less of a hassle than I expected, I wondered why we had never taken advantage of these facilities before. Maybe we can go again next week.

I didn't get a picture of this, but on Friday we took the kids to the dollar theater for an early matinee showing of The Princess and the Frog. I was relieved to see that there were only a handful of other people in the theater, but fortunately our kids were perfectly quiet and watched the movie well. We did let Ashley have her pacifier, which helped. Everett took a bathroom break partway through the movie and saw some racing arcade games. After that, he asked Joel to take him to the bathroom three or four more times so he could go out and drool over them some more, but I finally convinced him to sit on my lap where he enjoyed the remainder of the movie without distraction.

We weren't a huge fan of the movie, but it was a fun treat for the kids and we had a good experience. It's going to be another two years before we can even think of going to a movie all together again.

It was a good spring break. Joel did study a little--he has to sit for the second part of the CFA exam in June (he passed the first with flying colors, so I'm not worried about this one), but I think he enjoyed the time off.

Even though I have family coming in on Saturday to come see the baby, I will not complain if I have this baby sometime during this week (tomorrow, perhaps?). Anyone want to join me in thinking labor-inducing thoughts?