"Spring" Break...

We have been thoroughly enjoying our time together as a family during Scott's Spring Break.  One of the many benefits of the boarding school life is a nice long vacation in March.  Sadly, it hasn't felt very springy - we're still dealing with frigid temperatures and it is snowing as I type this!  This has easily been the coldest and longest winter I can remember.

We started burning our wood stove in October, and here we are in the middle of March with the fire still burning 24/7.  We're almost out of the wood in our closest woodpile and the other pile is across the street and through the deep snow...no fun.  We're both pretty sick of going outside in freezing temperatures to get wood - especially at night.  Thankfully, Scott does the majority of the wood trips and I have the much more enjoyable job of stoking the fire and keeping it burning!  Here he is running outside in frigid temperatures a couple of nights ago for a load of wood - I married a real mountain man! 

While all of our friends and colleagues escaped to Florida for their spring break, we've been having a "stay-cation."  We've visited the Montshire Museum and the See Science Center in Manchester.  We've played lots of games of Trouble and the boys have been doing puzzles non-stop.  Camden is still in preschool, so we've been going about our usual business of school drop offs and grocery shopping and eyes appointments...

We decided we needed to do something extra special over vacation so we planned an overnight down on the North Shore of Boston.  We got a great deal on a package at a hotel that included a pass to a huge Coco Key Water resort that was adjacent to the hotel.  We had a pass to spend the entire day there on Sunday and looked forward to it for weeks!  We left early Sunday morning and went straight to our good friends house for a visit.  I babysat their kids for a few years and grew very close to this family.  Their oldest kids are now 16 and 17 and their youngest who I first held when he was only a few months old is now 10!!  It made me feel SO old to see them, but we had a wonderful time catching up - we just love those guys!  Having Scott hang out with those kids when they were little is how I first knew that he would be an incredible Dad.  He was so natural and fun and creative with them, and I remember thinking that many of my college guy friends would not be so hands-on!  He has certainly proven to be a great Dad - I couldn't tear him away from the Legos tonight to get the boys to bed!  After our visit we headed to the water park with high hopes of a fun afternoon.  Micah and Sadie both fell asleep in the car so when we arrived at the hotel, after circling the parking lot 4 times to try to find a spot, Camden and Scott went in to check the place out on their own.  Here's part of the text conversation that followed...

 "This place is my hell right now..."  I chuckled and thought he was overreacting until I saw it with my own eyes.  Oh my goodness - the place was crawling with literally hundreds of people...Kids running wild with no supervision, SO much noise that we couldn't hear ourselves think, kids flying down water slides and crashing into other kids at the bottom...it was pure chaos.  TOTALLY not our cup of tea at all.  Scott let Camden go down a small waterslide once or twice while I trekked in with the youngest two and then we headed into the actual hotel to see if our room was ready.  It wasn't, but I asked if we'd be allowed to use the hotel pool since the water park was so packed.  They were super nice and said it was no problem, even though we hadn't officially checked in yet.  Thankfully, this pool and the locker rooms were amazing - bright, sunny, quiet, calm - ahhhh - we finally breathed a sigh of relief.  The kids had a blast swimming in the pool and we had the whole place to ourselves!

 Love these guys!

After an afternoon in the pool we checked into our room which had an AWESOME set up.  A king size bed on one end of the room and two toddler beds at the other end with the bathroom in the middle.  It is a genius arrangement and the boys loved having their own little section of the room...

 We headed out for dinner and met my good friend Christina and her son at the huge Jordan's furniture for ice cream.  We had a chance to walk around and catch up a bit which was awesome...

 These two had a blast together...

We headed back to the hotel with hopes of hitting the water park for a little while before bed.  We had hoped that it would have cleared out by that time, and although it was still chaotic and busy, it was definitely better.  The boys had fun for about an hour or so and then we turned in for the night.  Overall, I would say the hotel was great, the water park was not our scene.  We got home and both agreed that we will never attempt that "fun" adventure again!

After the night in the hotel, we headed into Boston for a visit to the Museum of Science.  This museum is incredible and we all had a great time exploring (barring the major meltdown Micah had in the middle of the place!).

 Story time geared towards preschoolers they got to see real live animals!

 Dinosaurs...

We got a (cheap!!) family pass to the See Science Center in NH that allows us to visit the MOS in Boston and hundreds of other museums throughout the country for FREE!  Yeah!!!  Our overnight adventure might not have been quite as exciting as all of our friends who headed to Florida, but we enjoyed the adventure and definitely made some great memories together as a family!  What more could we want?!?! 

** All photos from my iPhone.  Sorry for the poor quality! **