Spring Break: Chores, Sunriver, Daddy's Birthday

We counted two Saturdays ago as the first official day of Spring Break. We got some chores done around the house and ran a few errands.

We did Daddy's Red Robin birthday celebration a little bit early because we would be out of town for his birthday!

Grammy came along with us and I have to say that the 1 adult to 1 kid ratio at a restaurant was so nice. This was our most successful restaurant outing in a long time, which is encouraging!

That afternoon my sister and her two boys flew in! They stopped by on their way home to say hi and visit for a bit! Jett warmed up to me quickly. . . until he realized I wasn't his mommy. Then he wanted nothing to do with me!

On Monday I introduced chore charts! The kids have been begging for more Lego sets and so this was a good opportunity to teach them about the worth of money, paying tithing before you get what you want, and shopping around for a good deal.

Miley wanted in on the action, unfortunately, she did not have a chore chart! She would happily accept snacks as payment!

One of the jobs on the charts was to make your bed and get dressed by yourself each morning. Gage was so proud of his bed this day! 

Give a kid a sponge and anything can be fun, right? 

Maisey was a trooper and did an amazing job on each of her chores. She even earned an extra check mark on scrubbing the baseboards because she was working so hard!

ON of the jobs on the chart was reading for 15 minutes each day. For Maisey that is so easy, but for this guy it can be a struggle. I loved finding him vegging in the chair with a book.

One of the kids was a lot more motivated and understood the concept behind the chart. The other kid needed lots of reminders and positive praise to get his check marks! But they did pretty good considering we went on vacation the second half of the week!

Little missy and her shoe obsession!

We met up with some friends at the neighborhood park. Maisey was hauling around all four of these kids in the wagon. She was such a good big sister and friend!

On Tuesday, we were supposed to have a play date with a girl in Maisey's class and her sisters but one of them had worms (?!?) so we cancelled that! We spent the day running errands and birthday shopping for dad. The playdate sounded a lot more fun to the kids but at least we don't have worms, right?

Wednesday was the day we were all looking forward to! Daddy was coming home from work a bit early and we were taking off for Sunriver! The kids may have sat in the van for an hour waiting for Dad to get home, they were just too excited! Do you like their lanterns hanging from the hooks? That was totally their doing!

And. . . this is what spring break in Oregon looks like! I was hoping for sun not snow, but oh well! It was beautiful to look at and I was glad I wasn't the one driving!

We were there. . . FINALLY!!! This babe was so excited!

Gage slept in the car on the way over so he wasn't very tired at bed time! He got to stay up and play games with us for a bit!

But then we kicked him out so we could get our Pitch Perfect on! That movie never gets old!

The next morning we set off to go sledding. We figured with all of this snow this year we would have a great time. Not the case. :( We pulled off the highway to our normal sledding hill and an incident response truck and police car pulled over behind us. They informed us we couldn't park there and had to find a different spot. We've sledded there the past 3 spring breaks, so we were a bit disappointed. We packed all of the kids back in the car and headed up to Mt. Bachelor to sled there. It was soooo windy and cold, I was glad we weren't skiing this year! Do you see the snow blowing?

We hiked up the huge snow bank and my mom snapped this pic for us!

We tried sledding, but the snow was so powdery and we would just sink down in it, and not actually go down the hill. So we called it quits, and accepted our major sledding fail this year!

It warmed up by the afternoon, so we played outside for a bit.

We did a lot of bike races around the loop.

And Gage could pop a wheelie on this little bike. He thought it was so cool until he did it too high and fell over backward!

Kate's family came over with us. The kids enjoyed spending time with their cousins that they only see twice a year!

We played a lot more games, and ate lots of treats!

Friday morning was Shaun's birthday! I let him sleep in for a bit while we made his favorite breakfast, waffles with strawberries and whip cream!

Then he opened gifts! He got boxes of his favorite mints from Gage and Miley, the second book in the series he is reading from Maisey, and golf clothes, shoes, and lessons from me! I can't wait for his lessons to start. I really think he is going to have a blast!

We spent the rest of the morning ice skating and hanging out at the village. Gage was an animal with the walker thing and would fly around the rink! He only crashed into someone one time. Oops!

We stopped at Goody's for ice cream before heading home for naps!

After naps the kids put on a birthday concert for Shaun!

Then we had his birthday dinner and birthday pie!

Maisey helped me make the pie and was very proud of how it turned out!

On Saturday, we spent some time playing with the cousins before they had to leave.

 On their way out, we all stopped at the village for a train ride!

Took one last picture with Grammy, and then said good bye!

We spent the rest of the day relaxing and spending time as a fam! 

And playing games on our phones of course!

We had such a fun time in Sunriver and a pretty successful spring break! 

Now back to the normal life.