Fall Break: Part I

Ventura School District has this great thing called 'Fall Break'.  It's a lot like Spring Break, but it's in the fall.  What makes it so awesome is that I don't know of any other districts that do it, so we're the only ones out of school!  I'm pretty sure we'll try traveling during Fall Break next year.  But this year we are staying home, so I prepared myself with a list of free activities and some crafts.

Monday we started with a little bit of catching up from  the weekend.  We didn't actually clean the house on Saturday, so we had to do our chores.  The girls and I cleaned the bathrooms and Ryan pruned down my rose bushes.  Then there were the regular Monday chores of laundry and vacuuming, which the girls also helped out with.  The rest of the morning was spent playing outside.  They found these cool spider webs, which you can only see if you look really close!

We also got started on the first part of one of our crafts.  Miriam wanted to do something with the bazillion shells she collected when we were in San Diego.  I found some frames at Micheal's for a dollar.  The first step was to wash the shells, a fun project in and of itself.

 

 

Then the girls decided they wanted to ride their scooter/bike out front, so we did that for awhile until Nana stopped by for a surprise visit!  After she left, the girls painted their frames.

After dinner, Liz gave us a great lesson in family home evening.  She used the flannel board and the scriptures and read/told us the story of Nephi's courage.  At the end, I asked her what lesson we could apply to our own lives from Nephi's experience.  "Well, if the spirit tells you to kill someone, then you should do it."  I do love my literal Lizzie.  We talked about having courage when making hard choices in our daily lives.

Tuesday morning, we got up and got going again.  The girls got to have some computer time and then Jim came home to pack up.  He headed out to China Lake for most of the week.  After he left, we ate some lunch and then went to the zoo!!  The girls were excited to show Ryan their favorite animals.  I have never seen the zoo so empty; it was great.  It felt like we had the place to ourselves and there was no rush to get anywhere or see anything.  We did the whole zoo and then Ryan and the girls had a blast sliding down the grass hill at the park.

 In the afternoon, the girls watched a movie from the library.  It was a busy evening with dinner, teaching two piano lessons and getting everyone showered.  Then we worked on our pumpkin lantern craft.  We cut out the shapes for the faces from contact paper and then put them on jars.  Then we painted the jars.  Then I realized it's going to take several coats of paint to make this work.  So we're going to keep working on them!