Christmas Break

This week the kids are both out of school and we don't have any Bible classes at church so I'm taking my own Christmas break. I find it helpful to take full advantage of the "down-time". When January comes, we begin planning all sorts of fun things: Art Camp, Leadership Retreat, Vicki Courtney Simulcast from Moms and Daughters, and we get to decorate "The Park" and finish some other decorations. Part of me keeps thinking of little things I could go to the church building and do now, but, then I remind myself that the kids will be back in school in 8 days, we will be traveling for part of that, my bedroom needs to be organized, and River needs to finish her Science Fair project.

Yesterday, I bought a bike. I started spin class last year and love it but I'm needing to ditch the costly gym membership so David convinced me to use my Christmas money to buy the bike I've been wanting. Reese used his money to buy his seat. This is important. My only free time is free time with Reese. I used to be able to take Reese to the gym and get to work at a reasonable hour but now that River is at her new school, I spend a lot more time dropping off and picking up. I've been paying for the right to say I am a member of a gym over the last few months. Unfortunately, the benefits only happen if I actually use the gym.

River's science fair project is on Geocaching. Geocaching is a super cheap, family fun, outdoor activity. Geocacher's hide objects all around the city and put the coordinates on a website. Other cacher's use the coordinates to find the caches and log them. For the kids, there are fun little treasures to trade. I'm thinking about hiding one at the church building as yet another way to encourage families to spend some time together.

My goal for Christmas Break is to organize a couple of seriously neglected rooms in our house so I can have people over again. Yeah, we'll see if that happens. Organization and children really don't go well together.

Today it is freezing outside. The high is supposed to be 50-ish. That is way too cold for me. There was ice in the dog bowl this morning. Tomorrow though, we should be near the 70's so the kids and I are going to go look for treasure ... and do the Science Fair project. If you see my family wandering around a greenbelt holding iPhones and GPS units, don't worry, we know what we are doing! We might be lost but we have technology to save us :-)