Spring Break and London's 8th Birthday

Why on earth Alpine School District thinks it's a good idea to take a week off of school a mere six weeks before school gets out for the year is BEYOND ME?!??! Why not just let them out a few days earlier instead of carrying on into JUNE?!!?! What happened to getting Thursday and Friday off for Spring Break? Not that I don't enjoy the break from the routine, I'd just way rather have a two-or-three-day spring break and call it good, get back to work, and get out earlier. Who is with me? Anyway .... I am not on the school board, and I'm pretty sure no one cares. So, here's me MOVING ON.

After laying around being lazy, watching movies, reading books, and playing the Wii for a few days, we made a concerted effort to not be Spring Break losers. We talked Dave into taking the day off and found something fun to do. We had bought some passes to Incredible Pizza in Draper a while back in a fundraiser. That place was a LOT of fun. Go-carts, mini golf, laser tag, bumper cars, arcade, and all you can eat pizza. Sounds like our kind of thing. We stayed long enough to get all you can eat pizza for lunch and dinner. Yeah ... we're not stupid. And then we played, played, played for hours. We had a great time. Basically I rocked at laser tag. Austin kicked everyone's trash by beating the all-time individual score at laser tag. Obviously he gets his skills from yours truly. Dave tried once again to beat me at go-carts, but it is simply not possible.

Dave won this for London in an arcade game on the FIRST TRY:

And then he spent approximately $27 trying to win another one after I gave him a bad time about NEVER having won me anything. It was all fine and good for the sake of romantic gesture and all, but $27?!! Really Dave? He said something about the thought being the thing that counts or whatever, and I reminded him that you can buy a stuffed animal at Walmart for $10. Haha London LOVES her lion ... so way to go Daddy. :)

We caught a few movies:

My boys and I love the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, so we thought we'd give this movie a try. Even at matinee price, I had the distinct feeling I'd been robbed. To put it mildly, the books are WAY better than the movies. I'm just sayin.

Good movie. Interesting plot. We enjoyed this one with friends (without kids) after a bit of a long, long Spring Break week. I'm such a fan of date night. It's my favorite.


Hop is like Alvin and the Chipmunks, only not as funny and with less of a plot, and it's also missing the nostalgic appeal that Alvin and the Chipmunks has. Nonetheless, it was London's choice for a family activity for her birthday, and she LOVED it ... and I survived it. Barely.

One of the home health companies Dave works for rented out a theater for Rio, so we took the kids, and they seemed to enjoy it. While I did like it better than Hop, it wasn't my favorite. It was definitely nice to look at though. Beautiful colors and scenery. It's getting harder and harder for me to personally enjoy kids animated movies, or maybe I'm just spoiled by movies like Tangled, Toy Story 3, and Despicable Me that are actually entertaining for adults too. I'm in the minority on this one. The kids really enjoyed it, and Dave liked it quite a bit too.

London's birthday was at the end of the week of Spring Break (the 17th), and she turned 8 years old. She's been counting down to this one for VERY long time, and she was so excited. She's been asking for us to get her a desk for so long, she finally stopped asking. I sorta felt bad that she'd given up hope, but it made it that much more fun to surprise her. I found this desk with hutch and chair on the KSL classifieds:

It was a great deal, but I'm not a huge fan of natural wood color, especially in a pink/yellow girl's room with white furniture. So, I decided to paint it white and antique it. Thankfully, Michelle agreed to help me, and the Hunts agreed to sacrifice their garage for a week so I could hide it in there and work on it. It took WAY longer than I thought, and it was a lot of work, but I'm so happy with how it turned out, and London LOVES it. She had it all filled up with her books and girlie trinkets and stuff within the day. It was fun to see her so excited about something so practical! So, here's the finished product:

She's been counting down to this birthday since.... well, FOREVER. She was so excited to turn 8 and get baptized. This girl sure keeps us on our toes. She's full of spunk and sass and never let's a day go by without getting all wound up about something. She is lots of fun and her cute smile and giggle are just my favorite thing. She's been working really hard in school this year ... hence the request for a desk. She wanted a place to read and do her homework (awwww ... love that). Way to make me proud little lady. She keeps up with her brothers just fine but likes her alone time with her stuffed animals too. She is OBSESSED with horses and loves to learn all about them and read books about them. She's full of excitement and a lot of fun to be around. She's always been more of an animal girl than a princess girl, and I guess I'm glad about that. She's not too much into fluff and foofy girl stuff, and since she's my daughter .... that's probably a good thing. She'd just as soon be out riding her bike, playing basketball, or jumping on the tramp as playing with Barbies, and that sort of reminds of someone else I knew at her age. She's definitely "my girl," but believe me, she's got Dave wrapped around her little finger. No one melts his heart faster than London. Happy birthday little fire-cracker. We sure love you.