Spring Break 2015 - Max Patch

Today's spring break adventure was a quick drive just over the North Carolina state line to hike Max Patch with the Sextons. I say "hike," but it's more of a stroll. You drive your car about seven miles up a mountain, then mosey on up the last mile or so to the top. We were a bit unprepared for how cold it felt with the strong wind and cloudy sky, but the views made it worth it. 360 degrees of mountainous glory. There were a couple of other hikes in the area we might have liked to add on to our day if we were a bit more warmly dressed, so we plan to come back in the summer for sure.

We found this square, bricked hole in the ground.
Seemed right to climb in.

Daviiiid!

Wild and free.

Extremely happy with her walking stick.
Flat Stanley came too.

Did you notice the all-green attire? It's St. Patrick's Day.

Again with the stick.

"Look adventurous!" I said.

Last one about the snow days

By the end of week one we were ready to mix things up a little, so naturally I turned to pinterest. Luckily I had a board of fun things I've been meaning to do with the kids ready and waiting.

First up: paper airplane target practice. This was great, everyone took a lot of time to make their airplanes, even pulling out a book that had been on the shelf retired for awhile to help them make fancy designs. We practiced for awhile, then we made a big score sheet and went for victory. Ben beat us all by sailing through the 1000 point hole three times.

Next up: faces rip art. It was harder to find big faces to rip up than I thought it would be (we don't have many magazines), but we did manage to find enough to make it fun. (Thanks Tiffany for the great idea!)

Finally, the great ABC123 hunt. We each went all over the house in search of things that could pass as a letter or number then snapped up pictures of them. The only rule was you couldn't move things around, you had to find existing characters. At the end of our time limit we gathered in the family room and showed all our photos on the tv. I was really impressed with the kids! I thought they'd have a hard time finding things, but not so! They saw tons of letters and numbers I never would have noticed. Here are just a few of our finds...

D

H

W

C

It was a great two-weeks worth of snow days. It is kind of nice to get back to the normal routine, but man, that time off was fantastic. Good thing spring break is right around the corner.

Games with kids

So, we didn't spend the whole two weeks outside. We brought the party indoors too.

First up: games. Games are so fun, we never have enough time to play them with the kids like we'd like to. Well sir, we had nothing but time to play games these two weeks! All of them were fun, but telestrations probably made us laugh the most. Afton contributed a great deal to that merriment. Like so...

Here was the word she was supposed to draw: "sunfish." Turns out she mistook the S for an F and thought it said "fun fish."

And naturally drew some fish having fun. Wee!

There was also the time the clue was "telestrations" so I drew our family sitting around the table having a great time playing together.

But what did she think it was?

"People loving a building"

And then she was tasked with drawing a "sheep dog."

Okay, then other kids contributed to this gem, you can see the downward spiral for yourself...

"walking"