Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Spring Breaking

Spring break has come and gone, and we are back into the swing of real life again.  I counted the number of remaining weeks in the school year, though, and discovered we are only seven weeks away from summer!  This year has gone by ever so quickly.  It's been a good year, full of changes and new adventures.  I am looking forward to these last several weeks with my little students, and will miss them over the summer and next year!

Our crew spent a few days in St Louis over spring break, and visited the zoo and City Museum while there.  The zoo in STL is great - and freeeeeee!  You can imagine how much more I loved it with that price tag!  My 8-year-old had the time of his life.  We saw a bald eagle, red panda, gorillas roughhousing together (amazing sight!), penguins, hippos swimming and sea lions swimming over our heads!  We all enjoyed ourselves, though no one quite as much as my white-haired-animal-loving boy.

As I said, we also visited the City Museum (which is most certainly NOT free).  Oh my!  If you haven't been, let me try to explain.  It's sort of McDonald's play land meets caves meets rock climbing. . .it's like nothing I've ever seen before.  There is an entire structure called the MonstroCity on the outside of the building, spanning about 5 stories.  One has a funny feeling in one's tummy when one sees her 5-year-old daughter scrambling through metal coiling about 5 stories directly above one's head.  She was happily crawling through, silhouetted by the sky behind her.  I had to take several deep breaths.  Indoors, among lots of other physically challenging exhibits, there is a huge (and I mean HUGE) cave-like crawling/climbing/sliding structure, which includes a 10 story slide.  This structure also makes parents shake in their boots, because there are hundreds of nooks and crannies and tunnels and stairs for your children to disappear into.  We had the children stay together and took turns trailing little K.  All of these exhibits translated into sweaty, exhausted, exhilarated children.  We all recommend it if you're ever in the Show Me state!

And over the weekend, my husband and I celebrated our birthdays.  I looked in the mirror last night and asked him, "How did we get this old?"  I don't feel 42. . .I still feel about 25 or so.  My wrinkles and graying hair tell a different story, however.  And 50 and 60 sound younger and younger every year!

On the subject of my looks. . .my daughter was attempting to curl my hair with her brand new bubble curler the other day.  Shockingly, the curler was not making me into a raving beauty.  Knowing I had to leave the house in mere minutes and seeing the Shirley Temple-esque ringlets bouncing all over my head, I began to feel slightly panicked.  I ran my fingers through my hair, which only made it worse.  As I debated what to do with the mess, my dear 15-year-old daughter said, "In the words of the great 21st century American philosopher T Swizzle**, you gotta "Shake it off!" ***



**T Swizzle is better known to the general public as Taylor Swift.
***I'm sure you're dying to know how I salvaged my disastrous locks. . .I had the offending hairstylist pin it up into a bun. When I arrived at the party I was rushing to, my husband said, "Your hair looks really nice like that!" Score!

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