Can you believe we just packed up our Christmas decorations, we haven’t even celebrated Valentine’s Day, and I’m writing about spring break? Sounds wrong, I know, but for us, spring break begins in 4 weeks from today!
Last summer, Kurt and I spent a week away from our girls. My friend, Diana, stayed with the girls and Foxy, our beagle. When we came home, the girls were sad to see Diana leave. Diana loves to be on the go. My girls loved all the places they went and the many things they did. I came home and life went back to boring summer break with mom. I do not love to be on the go. I’m a homebody. My idea of a great summer vacation is staying home most days, hanging out together doing a puzzle, playing a game, watching a movie, and spending some time with friends. Have you seen that TV show, Wife Swap? In it, two wives swap places for one week. At the end of the week they meet and discuss what they have learned. Well, I reflected on that week away much like Wife Swap or rather, Mom Swap. I realized that I needed to be more fun using my girls’ definition of fun rather than mine. It impacted me so much that I made one of my goals for 2016 to be intentional about having fun with the kids.
I decided to make fall break more fun. I planed something fun for each day of fall break. The girls really enjoyed it. I started the week surprising them each morning, but by the end of the week I was telling them what we were going to do for the rest of the week.
I mentioned to the girls this weekend about planning for spring break. I explained that I would like to do something similar to what we did for fall break. They were thrilled. I got on the computer to look up free days at the Desert Botanical Gardens and the Phoenix Art Museum. Another day we will go to the movies. I did suggest one day of Netflix and a new puzzle, which they agreed would be fun. One day we will spend at the mall, every teenage girl’s dream. And that about sums up the week. I’ll save a little money from this month’s eating out and entertainment cash envelopes to cover our costs. I’m looking forward to a fun week. I started planning this weekend because I want to be able to have an idea about how much money I need to stash away and it gives me time to find inexpensive fun things for us to do.
I’d love to hear from you what you are planning on doing this spring break. Share them with us in the comments below.