..so shout all the working moms and dads who send their underagers to preschool.
I admit, I am excited for next year's Spring Break when I actually have an excuse to take a week off of work since Sprite will be forced to stay home from school. (The empty classrooms and cavernous halls may spook her a bit..) Or maybe I'll send her to her grandparents' (fine, we'll drive her, but walking is an acceptable form of exercise) for a week since both maternal and paternal side has a retiree among them, someone who can spoil her rotten while John and I keep hitting the time clock since I will also have to take off all the other school system approved holidays like Christmas and New Year's and Teacher's In Service Days and Furlough Days and What the hell, it's Thursday, go ahead and take off, your parents' bosses won't mind! days.
Luckily, her summer is already planned. (And yet I will still have to take off a few days since our school year starts in the middle of the week and summer camps don't do half weeks because they're SMART. But you know what? I'm actually okay with that. I'm going to take her swimming, to the park, maybe even to the zoo, and summer her brains out right before I deposit my exhausted child on the doorstep of higher education.)
So, what has Spring Break meant to us this year? Well, added tuition for one. Since Spring Break means no VPK, a free program in Florida, the preschool bumped up the weekly fee to their typical daycare haul. And of course, to add insult to time off injury, our county decided to have their Spring Break in the middle of March. What about Easter, you say? It's covered, with a day off the Friday before and a day off the Monday after. Two more days of parental woe as they watch their precious minutes get taken away from necessary time banks reserved for the freak vomiting episodes, fevers of unknown origin, and whatever other disease someone spread at school.
Okay, I'm done complaining.
Actually, we did have a lovely Passover and Easter this year, which coincides with so many other states' Spring Break schedules. Friday night found us battling the ever tenacious crowds of idiots revelers to get to a Passover Seder in the middle of Aventura, FL. It may not be difficult for some to imagine a van of seven people, six of which (yes, including my 12 year old nephew) have an opinion about where to go when you're ultimately lost since the GPS wants to just hand you your FAIL card before you've even left the exit ramp and every other car on the road is trying to hit you
Yes, they were trying to hit me. It's Miami, or a small part of it. Cutting someone off or turning a single lane exit into a three lane "it's my turn because I look more pissed off than you and I'm moving anyway I don't care if you were first and here's a lovely parting shot of my middle finger to keep your emotional stoves burning while you stare at my tail lights" event is a rite of passage in Dade County.
(Let's not mention the fact that we had to call the hosts of the event to find the place, even though we did go to the same place last year, yes, I drove then too, but in Aventura, the only place of reference is the mall. And EVERYONE is trying to get to the mall.)
(A note to my relatives: Next year, let's have Seder at the mall. With the food court, you're guaranteed at least five plagues to be actually present anyways, but we'll be there ON TIME. And that's what counts.)
Once we found the condo we were looking for, (I love my dad's directions, "Okay, Jen, make a left and then make an extreme right since it will be as soon as you enter the street. See it? Extreme right NOW!" Never mind that I'm already halfway into the turn and imagining this extreme right requires a fierce look of determination in order to bring out the essence of EXTREME.) and deposited the keys into the valet's hands, we lost ourselves again on the way to the Seder since no one remembered to ask which floor it was on. Which meant stepping off the elevator to locate some bars on a cell phone and make the required, yet always embarrassing call of "where exactly are you?" even though you've already had your free "I don't knew where I am" turn.
Who says holidays aren't fun?
I did take a ton of pictures while we were there, none of which have magically leaped off the SD card and into our computer, why won't it ever do that?, some included Sprite and the other kids participating in the 30 minute Haggadah (Finger puppets and action figures included!) (Okay, maybe Sprite wasn't too keen on her Pharoah figure. Even at five, she knew he was a bad guy by the fierce look on his semi painted face and the lack of rainbows on his cape.) and others included assorted pictures of John in a plague mask posing for the camera.
Yeah, that one's gold. I'm not sure you'll ever get to see it..
And yes, as my Facebook status said, my aunt, who was leading the service, did actually announce, "Due to fire safety reasons, we will not be doing page 5."
I love Passover.
And now that we're over 1 thousand words in, let me tell you about Easter.
Before this year, we've never given Sprite an Easter basket. She was okay with this, mostly because her lawyers didn't tell her this was mandatory, and by lawyers, I mean the thirty something other children in her class who were all so excited about what the Easter bunny would be bringing them. So, this year, now that she has a memory, and legal counsel, we acquiesed and got her a small basket of little toys, coloring books, and 1 egg full of m&m's. We even set up a little Easter egg hunt in my mom and dad's home which Sprite finished in less than two minutes, finding all 12 eggs and the organic jelly beans they contained. The Easter egg hunt was a success, she loved it, but getting that Easter basket? Her squeal of delight just cemented a yearly return engagement of baskets until she's in college.
Easter lunch was held at my in-laws, normally a boisterous occasion with all the brothers, their wives, and assorted children there. But being early meant Sprite had Nana all to herself and an opportunity to scope out all the hiding spots of the Easter eggs my mother-in-law had hidden for her younger cousins to also look for. This meant suspiciously spaced calls of "look what I found!" when the other cousins finally came in and began the hunt proper. I had to resort to handing off some of her haul to my sisters-in-law to make the rations look more fair.)
Add to that a visit with my sister, and a close friend I haven't seen in one hundred and sixty-odd trimesters, I have to measure in trimesters considering she went and had herself another baby who's already fourteen months now, and you have yourself a very busy holiday weekend.
And no, I didn't get a break.
I'm still looking for it though.
And now here's your chance to make a break for it! Over to Gretchen's site for some more Spin Cycle!
(Sorry, Gretchen, having issues with posting the badge... User error, I'm sure.) (Stop agreeing with that, John..)