START

2 : a beginning of movement, activity, or development

How to start a spring break:

Start with one trip to the zoo.

Follow with a trip to Cheekwood, where evidence of spring is just beginning to show with daffodils and other early blooming bulbs.

Add one gray, cold morning, quickly stirring in episodes of Phineas and Ferb whipped together with breakfast.

Our Spring Break is off to a good start, even if it doesn't look (or feel) like spring outside right now.  Saturday was lovely - a true glimpse of days to come.  It was packed to the brim with a zoo trip followed immediately by an excursion to Cheekwood.  (While I'm not normally one to double up on a day's pleasures in this way, B had an art class at Cheekwood from 1 to 4, so K and I wandered the grounds while her sister got an insider's tour of the museum, created in clay and crafted a futuristic playground out of pipe cleaners and styrofoam.)

Yesterday and today have been chilly, gray days.  That hasn't stopped me from doing spring break activities like watching a family movie on a school night and allowing the girls to start their week with TV (both huge no-nos in our home).   B and K are technically supposed to be in school right now, making up one of the ten snow days from earlier this year.  But we need rest more than they need a day of instruction.  So we're home, starting a spring break that will be free from travel, free from plans, free to do what we want.  Which is what we all are craving right now.

Hope your spring is off to a similarly good start, wherever you are, whatever weather you have.  May this day, this week, this season find you seeking rest, seizing moments to play and laying in the sunshine when it peeks out from behind the clouds.  That would be a good start, don't you think?