It’s Spring Break for quite a few of us around here, and I’m ready for it!
Not everybody heads out on vacation on Spring Break though – whether it’s because they can’t afford it or they’d just rather hang at home, or both. In general, that’s me. I like away-from-home vacations during the summer (or better yet, during the school year, when far fewer people are vacationing), but for the week breaks we get during the school year, I just like to soak up being at home. A week without quick mornings and full afternoons. But that doesn’t mean we don’t do anything!!!
One of my favorite things to do with the kids (besides getting together with family and friends, of course) is do something around town. There really are little (and big) “hidden treasures” everywhere – The off-beat little festival, the little-known museum tucked away somewhere, or the “field trip” to the grocery store that your kids thought was super cool (and I really do mean a real field trip, not just me calling a grocery shopping trip a field trip 😉 – lots of grocery stores have great field trips for kids). It’s fun to be a “tourist” in your own city for a day or two.
And then there’s just getting outside! If you live in the city or the suburbs, there are likely plenty of parks around. We like to hit some of the ones that we don’t usually go to – those ones that are a little out of the way and we don’t usually have time for, but I promise the kids, “We’ll have to come back another time.” Spring Break is a great time for all that “some other time” stuff.
Another thing we love to do is go hiking. Yes, we live in the desert… and the desert is BEAUTIFUL during the Spring! Beautiful sunshine without the blazing heat of summer. Perfect hiking weather!
We did a hike as part of a family reunion last year, so we had a good, fun group to hike and and admire nature’s beauty with:
We re-learned a little about different kinds of cacti:
We saw some beautiful, interesting, delicate, desert flowers:
We even sat still enough for a few minutes that a butterfly came close enough for me to grab a photo:
We compared each other’s heights to a sahuaro:
Overall – spring hiking in the desert in our “backyard” was a success!
What are you going to do in your own “backyard” this Spring Break?
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