Salvaging Spring Break

This week is Spring Break but before this week rolled around, we made plans for things to do. But you know what they say: “Man plans and God laughs.” Well, I guess the Almighty got a good laugh when it was the first day of Spring Break, because … we were all sick!

That’s right. All four of us were sick. We actually started getting sick on Saturday but by Monday, Jen was the fourth and final victim of when sickness invaded our home. She and I both had a cold, Jesse had a bad cough and my husband has also come down with something. Things were pretty lousy for a while there. We were all feeling pretty yucky and also feeling pretty down that our plans for Spring Break were ruined. (Well, I like to say “compromised” instead of “ruined,” because I am too stubborn to throw in the towel so easily!) We were also too “out of it” for much of anything to do at home because we were all taking medicines. I barely got any writing or reading done, and the movies and TV shows I planned to watch were put on hold. I wasn’t on the Internet too much, either. I could hardly concentrate. It was a cycle of sleep, medicine, eat, sleep, medicine, eat. Wash, rinse, repeat!

Now I have said this before and I’ll say it again: DayQuil is good stuff! If it weren’t for DayQuil, I wouldn’t have survived attending my daughter’s basketball game some years ago when I had the flu. So when a cold hits – a cold, not the flu – I grab the DayQuil! Seriously, it’s the one medicine that helps me get back on my feet when a cold is kicking my butt. (And it really did!) Today is Day 5 of my cold and I was finally feeling human again. Jen has been surviving on chicken noodle soup, yogurt and water, and she too is starting to feel better.  Jesse was taking Delsym twice a day for his cough and he was also feeling better.

So since the kids and I were feeling functional again today, I decided, you know what? It’s STILL Spring Break! Let’s try to do SOME of the things we planned to do.

So today I took the kids to Skate World. They had fun rollerskating and playing Air Hockey. I took many pictures and here is one of them:

For most of the stay at Skate World, I was fine. But after a while, I was starting to cough and feeling a little sluggish. (I’d been hacking up a lot of gunk today. Ugh!) But at least that happened close to the time when we would leave. The kids were having so much fun, though, they asked to stay a little longer so they could skate some more, so we stayed for a half hour longer. After that, I took them to McDonald’s so they could get a McFlurry (a rare treat they love).

I am glad that I was well enough to take the kids somewhere for Spring Break and I’m also glad they had such a good time. I hope tomorrow and Friday we will be able to do the other things we hope to do, but it really depends on if my husband is well enough. But if not, we’ll come up with something else to do instead. I know I am at least well enough to drive somewhere (and it’s too bad I can’t drive to Salem!), so if Plan A is a bust, we’ll just go to Plan B and have some other kind of fun and adventure. We still have two days of Spring Break left, so we’re gonna make the most of it!

Skating -- cuz that's how they roll!

“Mom, can we go skating? Pleeeassseee?” This was a question my kids often asked me, especially whenever they saw commercials or coupons about Skate World, a rollerskating rink in a nearby city. I kept telling them I’d take them sometime but never actually got around to doing it.

Well, it seemed like skating was in the cards for them. We recently made new friends, and one of the kids was REALLY into skating. They invited Jennifer and Jesse along to Skate World with them not too long ago. Of course, I was concerned the kids might not do well skating, or that they even might hate it, but I decided to allow them to give it a shot. Why not let them just TRY it? Just try it and see what happens.

Well, it turns out Jennifer is a natural at skating. She LOVES it. Jesse enjoys skating too, although he is not as good at it as his sister. But he refuses to give up on it, no matter how often he has fallen down. He gets better at it the more he practices.

Well, they first went to Skate World a few weeks ago, and they are hooked on it. They LOVE going skating! I am so glad that the opportunity to try this new thing came into their lives, because I know I’d only would’ve kept putting it off and would never have known how good they were at it.

So now they go skating twice a week. Today it was my turn to take the kids skating and I really enjoyed watching them have a blast on the skating rink. And I am so grateful that skating is now a part of their lives. Not only is it a great exercise but a fun activity!

The skating rink invites adults as well as children to skate, but I’m not so sure about me joining in on the fun. I might try it out later on. Meanwhile, I’ll be pinning skating-related pins on my new “Skating” board on Pinterest. And taking the kids skating when the opportunity comes up!