Our March Break
It’s been a while since I’ve had an entry here. February was a really housebound month and I’m so glad it’s behind us. I’m really looking forward to the arrival of Spring this month and lets hope that nice weather comes with it! 
So I really wanted to go somewhere, anywhere for March Break and was very tempted to load up the van and drive to Florida (flights were full at any nearby airports). I had found a 3 bedroom house with it’s own pool for the week for just around $400 at a really nice resort in Kissimmee. The only problem…Andrew had work obligations where people were flying in from out of town that he could not change. This meant later working hours for him as well all week. 
Our first day home we spent relaxing, I’m not even sure if any of us got dressed! It really was a lazy day. Here’s a shot of Ciaran taking a mid-day snooze.
Tuesday I decided to the kids bowling. The really wanted to go swimming, but I knew that without another adult with me it would be a little difficult. Bowling I could handle, especially at this particular alley as it had computerized scoring. Mackenzie typed in all of our names and got us going while I helped the boys with their cute little bowling shoes. I was really surprised they had them small enough for Ciaran (size 8), and can remember bowling many time as a kid in my sock feet. I have a lot of fond memories of bowling. I think I started at around age 7 or 8 bowling in a youth league. Then when I was 11 or 12 my parents were a part of our Church’s league, one evening our regular sitter had to cancel last minute so my parents brought us with them. As luck would have it they needed a few spare players and my brother and I joined the league as spares. By the end of the season, they put us on the roster for the next start-up. In this part of the country the style of bowling is called Candlepin. We use small balls 3 per frame and 10 straight pins.(see pic below) You can use the knocked down pins to help. It’s a lot of fun and great for younger kids to learn as the balls aren’t too heavy (like in ten-pin bowling…I still have to use the kids balls!)
Mackenzie was such a great help with Ciaran. She would take him up and get him all set up, it was really nice to see her taking the time with him. Now that he’s getting a little older, she tends to do fun things with him. He loves to play dressup with her and is not opposed to wearing her princess gowns and being a real-life doll for her. Here’s a pic or two before he decided bowling wasn’t fun anymore around frame 5.
Liam on the other hand loved bowling and really got into it! I may look into getting him and Mackenzie involved in a youth league. Here’s a few action shots of Liam:
I even tried a string too sporting Finn on my back in my new to me 4th Generation Beco. I’m really liking it thus far and find it easier to put on and take off than my BabyHawk. I also like the fact that it has a padded waist band.
After bowling we had dinner at the diner style restaurant at the Alley. The food was really good! Homecut french fries and really tasty gravy! I can’t wait to go back again!
Wednesday’s outing was the Twoonie Matinees at our 10-plex. This did not go quite as planned, mostly my part of poor planning. I wanted to try and go to a movie at the same time as my mom and Mackenzie, the only one that was playing alongside theirs was The Waterhorse. I knew Liam would like it and sit through it, and Ciaran’s attention span has been more into full-length movies lately. About 3/4 through, Ciaran decided he did not want to be there and tried to wake Finn at every opportunity. I thought about leaving, but figured that we’d be even more disruptive trying to get everyone out. Note to self: don’t do this again, unless you’re sitting in the aisle for a quick escape!!
We were expecting bad weather on Thursday, so I didn’t plan too much other renting a couple of movies at our local corner store and setting up our Zoombox to play movies in Ciaran’s room. What’s a Zoombox you ask? It’s a DVD player with a built in projector that will play your movies on the wall making them up to 60 inches! Although I don’t find the quality all that great, it’s a lot of fun for the kids and they’re not picky about pixels! They’ve really been into dog movies as of late. Snow Buddies, Air Bud, Air Buddies, Air Bud- World Pup…you get my drift. So our store has a pretty good selection of family films and I rented, Firehouse Dog and Good Boy! Ciaran was a little over anxious and decided he was going to get the DVD out of the holder, and snapped the disc in half!! The store was really good about it, and was glad I was honest with them (I guess they get a lot of broken ones returned anonymously), so now I’m trying to find a replacement copy. I’m guessing it’s going to be eBay as I’m not having much luck locally.
Andrew had decided he had put in enough for the week and took the day off. We decided to take off for the night for a little trip to Fredericton. It was a beautiful sunny Spring like day and when we arrived in Fredericton we decided to take advantage of the double digits and sunshine and went to O’Dell Park for a little hike. Here’s a few pics from our afternoon there. I’m still getting the hang of my new camera so the snow threw me off a bit, nothing a little editing in Picasa can’t help though.
This first pic is of the six of us, from left to right: Ciaran, Andrew, Mackenzie, Cara (me) with Finn on my back peeking out and Liam. Isn’t it a cool shot?
Here’s a few other random shots from our hike at O’Dell Park:
Ciaran
Finn and I
Andrew giving the boys a lesson on birch bark, and learning just how wide a tree is!
It was really nice getting outside in the nice warm sun, it makes me really eager for Spring and enjoying the new back deck we built last summer. After leaving O’Dell Park we took a drive to Kingswood to see how busy it was. Kingswood is an indoor entertainment centre with 30 lanes of bowling, a huge indoor play structure and small play area for toddlers, laser tag and arcade games. Since it was the end of March Break we weren’t sure how busy it was going to be, so we found out that there is a lull between 5:30 and 7pm, so we headed out for dinner and returned then. The kids had a fantastic time! Ciaran just kept repeating over and over again, “This place is awesome!” I didn’t get very many photos as we were so busy chasing everyone. Finn kept trying to climb the gate of the toddler area, I was so hoping he would not follow in Ciaran’s footsteps with the climbing! He’s still not walking on his own yet, but his crawl is a half-walk/half-crawl, he looks like a little bear cub, I tried to catch a shot of him, here’s the best I could do.
Here’s few of the action shots I managed to catch, this is that the bottom of a really fast slide, you can totally see the excitedness of each of their faces:
We headed back to the hotel after Kingswood thinking that the kids would be super worn out and fall asleep quickly. Wishful thinking! Finn fell asleep right away as did Andrew, then Liam and Mackenzie finally stopped bickering and nodded off. Ciaran my little night-owl…finally fell asleep at almost 1am! He was literally bouncing off the walls!
After a fairly good sleep, Finn woke a couple of times since he slept with us in the King size bed, we headed to the famous Boyce Farmer’s Market held each Saturday in downtown Fredericton year round. It is both indoor and outdoor and very busy, so Andrew decided it would be easiest to wear Ciaran in the BabyHawk and I wore Finn in the Beco. I brought a stroller once, and it was a nightmare trying to get around. I picked up some local produce and a seafood chowder mix, Andrew got some beef jerky and samosas, and the kids picked out some homemade chocolate easter eggs. We had lunch at the Market, I got my usual chicken donair that I shared with Finn, while Andrew and Mackenzie got beef donairs and the boys had a hot dog.
We told the boys if they were well behaved at Market, that we would go pick out a new toy for them, as long as they would get rid of one at home. They’ve discovered a new Fisher Price series of toys called Planet Heroes .They very similar to the Rescue Heroes toys of the late 90’s. There’s even a DVD of the TV series, and the boys just love it! It’s space oriented and teaches them all about the solar system. Finally Liam has decided that he no longer wants to be a Monster Truck Drive- he now wants to be an Astronaut! How’s that for a goal? After lots of indecisiveness Liam finally decided on a character called Saturn “Rings” and Ciaran picked out Jupiter “Gustus”.. It’s finally so nice to see them take an interest in the same things and actually play together. At ages 5 and 3 it’s made such a difference over this same time last year. My boy are growing up! Mackenzie decided to get another WebKinz this is number 11 (even thought I’m pretty sure we agreed on 10 being the limit) and she got a really cute St Bernard and called him Max. The funny thing, when she tried to name his room “Max’s Room” it seems the work Max, is a blocked word, I thought this was pretty strange!
Well if you’re still with me, I thank you for reading all about our March Break adventures!
March 15th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Sounds like a fun March Break! Ours is called Spring Break here because it’s not always in March! This year it’s the first week of April. You have given me some ideas to do with the kids. I have managed to book the Mon-Tues off work so I have 2 days to do stuff with them. Although I also have Rowan registered for daycamp at the Y, I did that before I realized I was able to get time off!