Winter Break. For those who were wondering...

So in the south we have this thing called "Winter Break."  This may be confusing to my Westerner/Midwesterner/Northerner friends.  Let's just say it's what you get  when you start school on the stinkin' first or second week of August.  It's also what you get instead of snow days.  I actually know this because the first year we lived in GA it snowed and school was cancelled.  And even after the snow was gone school was still cancelled.  The rumor was that there was a patch of ice on one of the bus routes so we didn't have school for the entire week.  We also didn't have Winter Break.

Winter Break works out great for my friends who work for Delta.  They just gather up their family and fly to the beach and the sun.  But I'm not complaining, this also works out great for me because we ditch the discipline of daily schedules and pull out our "the possibilities are endless, what should we do?" dreams.  A friend of mine inspired me when she let each person in the family choose an activity on President's Day.  The day looked fun, but intense.  Since we had a whole week, we put the idea on tranquilizers and had each person choose a family activity that we would accomplish sometime in the 9 free days.

When I presented this amazing idea one of my sweet children commented that he hadn't planned on spending that much time with his family.  Eventually he conceded that if we had family time in the morning it could be checked off his list before his friends even woke up.  Motherhood is nothing if not an exercise in trading the ideal for the real.

Well, I got to choose first and I chose volunteering at Gracie's Closet.  I actually chose this 1 month prior.  I had even registered on line for our time slot.  I can be a little ditzy so life goes better when I ask, "What would a careful planner do?"  I played that game and googled our destination and used my GPS for a backup. My reasearch yielded the info that we live 15 minutes from Gracie's Closet.  At 8:45 I had my little winter-breakers in my car on our way to a great morning of giving back to the community.  We drove to the complex and started driving around.  We were almost there, but not quite.  I started asking strangers for advice (a personal favorite of teenagers) and got some slightly helpful directions.  At least we found out from the sign on the directed door that Gracie's closet had moved.  On our way out, one of our helpers ran out of her office and said, "My boss said that Gracie's closet moved."  People in the south really are nice.

 We got to our destination and walked into a nice newly renovated building with no sign of people.  I started wandering into the back where I heard voices.  The voices informed me that the volunteer organizer wasn't there that day, but I could leave my number.    I felt my dream slipping :(  Then we met another woman that knew a little more.  She offered to call Lauren, the volunteer organizer, then informed us that Lauren was 15 minutes out, and we could come back.  I of course offered to wait.  I didn't want to lose what little momentum we had.  When the helpful person saw we were going to wait, she said, "Let's go back and see if you can get started."  She showed us the clothes and the hangers and the wrinkle releaser and we were on our way.  When Lauren arrived  she apoligized for not being there.  She didn't know we were coming.  I thought about how I had signed up electronically, and how sometimes I order things online and they don't come and realized something.  There must be a place on the computer that says, "Yeah, I mean it" that I don't know about.  But everything turned out great and we learned that Gracie's closet offers nice clothes for foster kids to select at no cost, and that sometimes an item looks like a skirt, but really it's an upside down shirt, and Woolite wrinkle releaser is the product I've been waiting for my whole life.

Activity 2 belonged to Gabe.  He and Andrew both wanted Friday's sports activity, but Gabe had some unfulfilled scout requirements so I convinced him to take that route instead.  He needed to visit a National park, monument, museum, etc.  He had been to DC, but wasn't 12 at the time so needed another experience which didn't hurt any of us.  Here we are living in the Atlanta area so Gabe's activity was to attend the Martin Luther King site.  We arrived without incident, well one teeny incident where someone related to me thought I was driving down a one-way street and panicked which made me panic, but it wasn't a one-way street after all so no worries.  Luckily the police car that was parked a block away did not contain a police officer that wanted to ask me what the heck I thought I was doing. Our 1.5 hrs. spent in the museum, church, memorial, and viewing the outside of Dr. King's birthplace was meaningful and educational.

Rebecca's activity was tie-dying shirts.  Tie-dye makes everything better and we all know it.  Our goal was to create shirts for St. Patrick's Day.  They turned out smashingly.  We invited a friend who I thought was a novice, but turned out to be an expert.  Sorry Max, for questioning your techniques.  The results were inspiring.  And thank you Rebecca for your sacrifice...rubber band gathering, dye mixing, tutoring, and shirt rinsing, and by the way, I love the color of your fingers.

Nerf guns was the final activity.  Would it be a school break if we didn't go to the church for a sports activity?  I think not.  We scheduled the start time for as early as possible because we thought Andrew had a lacrosse game in the afternoon. I cruelly woke everyone at the crack of 9:45 and then we discovered that Andrew's game had been cancelled.  The damage had already been done  (everyone was up) so we went ahead with our wee hours of the vacation morning plan.  We were met by friends and the games began.  I actually had to leave, but it looks like it was fun.

That's not all we did.  There was some weeding and bush trimming excitement, some riotous instrument practicing, some off the chains book reading and we watched the ever thrilling "Jungle Book."  I mean, do we know how to party or what?  It's been a lovely holiday, and as Gabe said, "Now you have to go back to your day with no children."  A while ago Gabe asked, "Aren't you glad you still have children at home with you?"  You know what? I really am.