Spring Break 2008

When we were younger, my mom instituted a thing she called "lost days." We only had them once or maybe twice a year. When everyone in our family was feeling really stressed out, she would announce that today was going to be a lost day. We all got to skip school/work and went back to bed and stayed there until we felt rested. Then we were allowed to stay in our pajamas as long as we wanted. We usually never left the house during these days. We just holed up with Monopoly and a bag of M&Ms and hung out together. Sometimes we would have movie marathons, and sometimes we would just talk and recuperate from life.

Since Monday was the first day of Spring Break for our family, we had our first annual Lost Day. It was just as good as I remembered it as a child. I stayed in my pajamas until 4pm and watched my Netflix movies. The kids pretty much ran a muck eating popsicles in the front room while playing the wii, etc. It left us all feeling rested and rejuvenated so that we could party the rest of the week.

On Tuesday we checked out the Autry Western Heritage Museum which totally rocked. It was filled with interesting exhibits. The kids loved dressing up in all the costumes, and panning for gold. I enjoyed all the history and art. There are even a couple of displays featuring those rascally Mormons. The children's room is a little house/restaurant that has all the real dishes, phones, clothes, furniture, etc. from a real house that the kids can play with and touch. They loved that and so did I because the entire exhibit is based on the book On Gold Mountain by Lisa See which our book club is reading in September. It is a fascinating book that follows a family of Chinese immigrants through a couple of generations. Anyway, (I better not let myself get sidetracked talking about books. I get so excited I start typing run on sentences) the museum is free the third Tuesday of each month and I highly recommend it.

Today we are going to try and not get lost heading to the beach. We've had it with the heat this week and we are getting out of Dodge. The kids want to try flying their new kites and I am itching to get some sand and sea between my toes. If you don't hear from us soon, we took a wrong turn on the 110 and got lost somewhere in Compton where wily gang members stole our minivan hub caps and forced us into slave labor polishing their bling and golden teeth.