Abundantly Blessed: Spring Break Activities

During spring break in March, our family chose to hang around town and do local activities rather than travel. Here are some of the special events we did:

RODEO

In years past, we've taken our kids to the rodeo but only purchased grounds pass tickets. This means we've done the events outside the main stadium, things like mutton bustin, pig races, Fun on the Farm, the Agventure animal building, etc. We've always loved our time doing these activities. This year, however, someone from church offered free tickets for our family to attend the actual rodeo show and concert, so we jumped on the opportunity to experience it! We enjoyed our amaizng seats near the front.

Watching all of the rodeo events was a new experience for our kids. We saw bareback and saddle bronc riding,

tie down roping, team roping, steer wrestling, barrell racing,

mutton bustin, chuck wagon races, and bull riding.

The calf scramble was a new event for all of us to see-- high school FFA members racing to catch one of 15 calves. This event took quite a while, as it proved to be quite difficult for the teenagers to catch some of these large and stubborn calves!

The concert following the rodeo events featured country music star Dierks Bently. Since we had been at the rodeo already for quite some time, we only stayed for a few songs. The kids were especially impressed with all the lighting effects!

Before leaving the grounds, we headed over to the Agventure building. Unfortunately, the lines were way too long to visit the petting zoo or walk through some of the exhibits we've enjoyed seeing in the past. We did like seeing this remarkable balloon display, as well as some of the animals.

LITTLE BEAKERS

During another day of spring break when Jason was at work, I asked Grammy and Papa to accompany us to Little Beakers, a hands-on science lab for kids. I knew the kids would enjoy the experience much more if they could all choose their own experiments. Each of us adults walked around with one of the kids and helped complete the experiments. The kids were wowed by their activities and seemed to have a great time! Thanks so much to Grammy and Papa for being amazing science helpers!

Each of the kids chose to do at least one project involving slime-making.

There was lots of fun science-learning going on during our hour-long visit.

This Mentos "rocket" was one of Cody's favorite experiments.

Following our time at Little Beakers, we visited a playground near Grammy and Papa's house and then were treated to a delicious dinner at their home. What a fun day!

ST. PATTY'S DAY

For St. Patrick's Day, we visited our kids' favorite local donut shop and discovered that they make all of their donuts green for the holiday! I also colored the milk green for the kids' cereal. The boys happily ate their funny-looking breakfast, but Adley refused the colored milk.

ESCAPE ROOM & PICNIC

Another day, we visited an escape room for our first-ever time as a family of 5. Jason and I have enjoyed doing a few escape room with friends, workmates, or family, and our kids have always seemed interested in the experience. The room we visited was entitled, "Detention: One Last Day of Summer." The room was decorated like a school classroom, and our job was to figure out all the clues to get us out of the classroom in time to meet our friends at the beach. If we failed, we'd be stuck in after-school detention to kick off the summer.

The kids seemed to enjoy the experience, and all three of them (Adley included) either found or figured out at least one important clue all by themselves. We were impressed with their efforts! Thankfully we made it out of the room with plenty of time to spare. Our escape room guide was very complimentary and said we solved the puzzles way faster than the novice level experience we had requested.