Spring break was not what I expected, but then God's plans are not always our plans. Renee and Andy were here from Saturday through Tuesday afternoon. Nicolas still had cello lessons and soccer practice that afternoon/evening, but we were able to clean up the house and relax and watch Puss in Boots as a family. On Wednesday after homeschool orchestra, we packed a picnic lunch for 9 kids and met Juliet (seminary wife) with the Clayton's five children at Riverside Park. Stacy Clayton (another seminary wife) had just delivered child #6 on the Saturday evening before and Juliet was looking for a little help with entertaining the kids. Since Sarah Woollin was planning on coming over to our house with her three children later that afternoon, I told Juliet just to drop the Clayton five off as well so that she could relax and get a few things done at her own home. Things were crazy here for awhile with a dozen kids running around, but the weather was great and the kids played outside most of the time. Thursday afternoon, the four Van Brugge children came over for a couple hours so Dave and Wendy could do some birthday shopping for one of the kids. Let's just say that my kids did not lack for playmates over spring break! I think Nicolas was actually going through book withdrawal.
On Friday we prepared and celebrated a Christian Passover as part of our home school curriculum. One of the children's leaders at BSF has been to many ceremonies for Messianic Jews, but has never participated in a Passover ceremony. She gave me quite a bit of information including a Passover cookbook and also provided us with the Passover Seder plate and Elijah cup. I invited her to join us for the Passover ceremony Friday night. We missed Caleb, but is was nice Sharon was there to fill out the table. Because of our Passover celebration we did miss the Good Friday service at the FRC so we watched Ray Vander Laan's Easter video with the kids on Saturday night instead. We also finished up our Resurrection Eggs (we have done these for years and the kids never tire of them!) and Passion Hymns for kids (the kids love singing these every year, too) over the weekend.
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| Cloth with three pockets for the Matzos |
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| Seder plate |
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| Elijah cup |
So spring break wasn't exactly the relaxing/catch up on things type of week that I pictured, but having all those kids over was fun and we enjoyed helping out other seminary families. I did manage to wash all the downstairs windows, try my hand at home-made granola, and clean up my garden boxes to plant early spring seeds like spinach, lettuce, turnips, beets, radishes, and other greens. I made my own version of "solar" gardening by placing a black plastic bag over the garden to warm up the soil a few days before planting. I am not sure if my kids will eat/enjoy all that we have planted, but since Renee shared these seeds with, I thought I could plant and always share with other seminary families at the food pantry. Caleb is afraid I am turning into a "all-natural", "organic", homeschool geek.
Russ managed to finish his Ecclesiology paper on paedocommunion (from his three week class in January) and also write up a portion of his counseling manual that he needs to present this week (I think?). He also did quite a bit of yard work since the weather was so nice. Russ collected all that rusty old metal from behind the shed and in the back landscaping and had our neighbor, Tim, haul it away for us. Tim who lives a little ways up our block with his sister and his one-eyed dog has some sort of garbage removal business. Sunday afternoon when we were out for a walk he yelled out at us that he got "$20 bucks!" for all the old metal. Russ was just grateful he didn't have to haul it in the back of one of the vans!
Now I am just sitting here contemplating whether I really want to go to track practice or not since it is only 37 degrees and snow pellets/ice/snow keep falling. Hard to believe we had 80+ degrees only a few weeks ago!
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