All the World's a Stage

Everyday is fairly busy in our family but we get extremely crazy late November-mid December. This year, our kids will perform with five different choirs, participate in two plays, have two dance recitals, a Jazz Band concert and a piano recital. All of these activities are in addition to basketball practices, swim meets, Tae Kwon Do, Cub Scouts, 4-H, Young Women, and Young Men/Scouts. Oh, and school happens, too. 

We are really looking forward to our trip to Green River. It's nice to have some calm and be together. We spend most of the day hiking and exploring. Our kids also love to play games in the hotel room and swim in the pool. The last few years, Brian, Katherine and David have waged a long Axis and Allies game together. It usually starts the day we arrive and ends when it's time for us to pack up. 

Planning food around Eric's allergies has been tricky but I'm getting better at finding foods that he likes. We found out that he doesn't have celiac which is nice because he might grow out of his wheat allergies. Right now we have taken him off wheat and milk as those seem to be the foods that affect him the most. Luckily, our kids prefer homemade meals in our hotel room because it's really difficult to find fast food that Eric can eat. Wish me luck on my gluten-free/dairy-free pumpkin pie!

Something else we like to do on our trips is to listen to books on CD. Sometimes I can remember what we did on our vacations based on what book we were listening to at the time. For example, we listened to Matilda on the way to Nauvoo eleven years ago. I can still remember arriving at the campsite and Katherine begging us to keep the CD player going until Grandma and Grandpa arrived because we were at the climax and she needed to hear what the Trunchbull did. It seems like some authors are better than others for read-alouds. Some of our favorites are Dick King-Smith, Roald Dahl, Louis Sachar, Richard Peck, JK Rowling, E.B. White, and Brandon Sanderson.