Kick Off To Spring Break

This week my kids are off school for Spring Break. I hate to admit this, but I seriously thought about cancelling my Monday at mom's. I have 5 days to spend with the kids, and I want to make it count. After much thought, I realized that the best way to make it count would be to go to mom's house and take the kids with me...and put them to work! More than ever, I feel like it is SO important to be there for each other as a family. When one is in need, we need to be there to help ease the burden. All for one, one for all.

I was expecting a bit of a fit from the teenagers. I know they have other things they want to do with their time off other than go to grandma's house to work. Much to my pleasant surprise, they didn't complain at all! They seemed content to go over for a few hours and help out with some chores around the house. The little kids, however, weren't as easygoing. After some initial complaining, they finally got to work sweeping the floors, folding blankets, organizing the bookshelf, and making some piles of laundry. They lasted for about 15 minutes...baby steps! Sorry for the lousy pictures, I'm still learning how to use this new camera!!

Meanwhile, the "big" girls and I worked on some of my ongoing projects. Amber helped me organize the years of family vacation pictures into photo albums, Maurina helped reorganize the food pantry and cleaned out the aquarium (whose tenants have been relocated). I worked on cleaning the back room and am pretty darn proud of myself for my accomplishment: I was able to get all of the clutter off of the air hockey table!!! This was no small task (I even had to haul some stuff up to the attic) ;) I should have taken a "before" picture.

We spent all morning working on our cleaning/organization projects and left shortly before mom's naptime, because I knew she'd have a conniption fit if I stayed there with all 5 kids during her nap! I'm glad that I didn't give into the temptation to call my day off. It's hard to give up time to do something for other people, especially for kids. I'm hoping to lead by example and help them to recognize the good feelings that come by helping others. I would like to think that the girls felt good about the service they were able to give to their grandparents. We've even discussed (the big girls and I) about coming on Mondays during the summer to help with more projects (dad has a lot of organizing projects to tackle! Lol). I think it was the perfect way to kick off our Spring Break!!