Weekends Are For Running

I adore these spring weekends we find ourselves blessed with. We've done an excellent job enjoying the outdoors and having fun. Yard and house work has taken a backseat to our fun, but I'm confident it's all worth it because I have yet to regret it. Ever.

The minis had a week and half off for spring break. While we got away for a long weekend in Chicago (read about that here), I wanted to make this weekend extra fun for them. You see, all week long, we remembered that at this time last year we were on beaches in the Florida Keys, parasailing, riding roller coasters in the Magic Kingdom, and enjoying the amazing food in Little Havana. Sure we had a fantastic spring break for being at home, but we've been a little nostalgic for long days at the beach.

I feel as though I succeeded with my mission to make a memorable weekend. The kids played outside until dark Friday night, we ran all around Saturday, and Sunday we took it easy with shopping and bringing out their favorite daycare toys to play with on their remaining spring break days.

Elizabeth came out into the living room with drawings and cut outs. She strategically places them around the living room and told me, "mom, don't surprised tomorrow morning if you hear loud jumping from my bedroom while you're sleeping tomorrow morning." After questioning the loud noises part, it came out that she had made her own obstacle course. She was hell bent on completing it in her bedroom the next morning. You can tell it had been a busy week when I shrugged my shoulders and replied, "just don't make it too loud."

Not that it really mattered because we had to be up early to run Hubs to work. We stopped for our fave donuts to help with the early wake up call. Then we had a leisurely morning at home. The minis played with Lego's and ate donuts while I took a long shower. It was amazing.

Once it warmed up a bit, we roamed the Blank Park Zoo. The minis were super excited because I gave them permission to play an extra long time on the playground since the train wasn't up and running yet. That was the highlight of their day.

I love our special Mom and Minis Days.

We grabbed a quick, late lunch at Tasty Tacos (another one of our faves). We had just enough time to pick up Hubs from work, stop at home for our hiking boots, and hike one of our favorite trails before heading to a family birthday party with, get this, more of our favorite Mexican food. That's the way to eat: Mexican food, a hike to walk it off, followed by more Mexican food. 

Brown's Woods has become one of our favorite places to hike. The trails aren't extremely long, but it's close to home (about a 10 minute drive) and we can easily get in several miles of decent hiking quickly on our weekends. We tend to come here quite a bit right before one of our trips because it's great training for hiking in the mountains at a National Park. We also enjoy Ledges State Park for this.

Totally normal to stop in the middle of the mud and take your boots off to "readjust motheerrrrr."

So much mud from all of the melting snow and ice. I decided at the last minute to throw on my snow boots instead of my hiking boots. Smart move on my part!

Homemade Mexican food is the. best. thing. ever. The minis enjoyed guacamole, chips, and salsa.

With our Saturday's so busy, the past few Sunday's have been our "do days." We run our errands, get haircuts (as evident from the picture above), baking, meal prep for the week, cleaning, and even a little/lot of writing time for me.

I don't always let them lick the brownie batter bowl, but when I do it's a big deal.

She was talking to her chicken before she ate it....but mostly she ate that bag of veggies to her left.

The new doormat I got for my birthday. It's just so fitting for our house!