Spring Break

The boys have school off this week for spring break.  We have had playgroup at a park, gone to the fort (where Elijah saw a rattlesnake), we hit the library for bilingual story time, the boys swam for a little while yesterday afternoon in a cool jacuzzi (because we didn't think to heat it up before they thought of swimming), we gave Dad a ride to the airport this morning, we walked through an animal shelter and looked at the dogs for fun (lots more chihuahuas in shelters here than back in New York -- I'm not much of a small dog person), and we went to a meeting today for the Women-2-Women group [women-2-women.org] that I joined and learned about helping people in Guatemala (and I helped out with taking photos and videos at the meeting), and then we got some ice cream sandwiches to reward the boys for all being so good at the lady's house while we had that meeting for 2 1/2 hours.  

I also found time to work on a little more of our Czech genealogy research -- mostly just finishing translating some records and entering them into our genealogy software.  After being so blessed to find so much new family information about so many lines of my mom's dad's ancestry, now the big thing will be to get it all translated and enter the information into the computer so we can organize all the information we have and see where to go from there (it's just so tempting to keep searching through those old church books to try to find just one more record rather than working on translating and data entry, but we'll get it done eventually).  :)  I also found out that the FamilySearch.org website has facebook pages for genealogy research in different parts of the world, so I checked out the Czech page.  I asked a question about a record we had found, and had an answer within an hour -- I think that's going to be very helpful for the things we can't figure out on our own.  (The only problem is it also sent my research question out to lots of my "facebook friends," and I'd rather not inundate all the people I know on facebook with genealogy questions all the time, but I don't know if there's any way to change the settings so it only sends it to people on the Czech genealogy facebook page and not everyone else.  Oh well).  

The other thing we've worked on this week is reading through large packets of paper that have been delivered from the escrow company about the house.  Lots and lots of paperwork.  The pile of papers we got this week was probably 3 or 4 inches thick.  But we've learned more about the neighborhood association, and we're getting more paperwork signed and returned, so that just means we're getting closer and closer to getting into our new house.  Oh, and we've also started the process of choosing homeowner's insurance, yet another step in the right direction to getting a house.  :)

Oh, and besides fun with the boys and a little genealogy time, I also got to go to a mom's night out with other moms from Camden's school, which was fun.  That was on Tuesday night, which happens to be when Michael has Webelos cub scouts, so I got a babysitter so I could go to the mom's night out.  Michael had a great idea, and said we should go to a movie together afterwards since we already had a babysitter and we still have movie tickets from his anniversary gift to me.  So we went and saw that Wizard of Oz movie, which was pretty cute.  And it was fun to go on a little date with Michael.  We also have another date night to look forward to this weekend: we got a babysitter planning to go to the temple this weekend before we found out that the San Diego temple is closed for cleaning this week, so we'll just have to go out to dinner instead.  Luckily we still have restaurant gift cards left over from my fun anniversary gift too.  :)   And today is Thursday, so that means volleyball tonight, of course (I've been going through volleyball withdrawals since I haven't gotten to play in the daytime recently -- last Friday I missed it because we had our house inspection, and this week I haven't gone because I didn't want to try to take all the kids along, but next week I'll be there).

And tomorrow we have a hike planned with our hiking group.  We're looking forward to a church Easter egg hunt  on Saturday that we invited a few friends to, and enjoying Easter dinner with my family, Grandma Bev, and Jennie & Dalin and their kids.  It's been a nice week off.  It's always good to have a break sometimes.  I'm really looking forward to the summer break from school.  I love days when you can just go to the park or go on a hike and not worry about having to rush off to the next place on the daily schedule.