Monday, January 18, 2010

A Day Off of School


On Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I thought I would spend a relaxing day with the kids. I always have this idea in my mind that we will play a few games. I might even sit on the couch for a few minutes. Maybe we'll read books.

I have these ideas.


When the kids and I finished breakfast this morning, I gave them a number of options.


"Let's finish our volcano!" I declared. "All we really need to do is have it erupt." The truth is that it has been in our basement for a long time, ready to erupt any minute. It took us hours over multiple days to do the paper mache and paint it.


They shrugged their shoulders. We played with baking soda and vinegar a few weeks ago.


"Do you want to play a game? We could play Blokus," I hoped they wouldn't say Monopoly. It takes incredible patience for me to wait for them to calculate their own transactions, and I always lose (yeah, never won Monopoly with the kids, what is up with that?)


"Nah."


I sighed.


"We could make ice cream," I offered. We have a quart of cream that expires next week.

"I have a better idea! Let's make spinach tortellini!!" Andrew cheered.


"Yaaayy!!" Gladys agreed.


sigh.


The real insanity about "pasta for the insane" is that it never goes away. And, what is worse, it is the only way my children will eat spinach.


It is the old Mom-if-you-let-us-put-flour-on-your-floor-and-play-with-raw-egg-dough-make-you-fold-tortellini-for-an-hour we'll eat spinach!!


"Oh, alright, at least it smells better than Playdough."


Of course, after making tortellini, we went on to make even more paper snowflakes, play with Playdough, paint with watercolors, work on a book report, and fry chicken. I shouldn't have opened my mouth about the Playdough. What was I thinking?

7 comments:

amyjr said...

Boy you do more than I would do for a day off from school. How was the pasta cuz it looked good.Yummmm

Anna said...

And what did I do? Lounge around in my PJ's and talk to my friends on Facebook. Far from happy, organized, pastalicious activity.

AreWeThereYet? said...

Will your gorgeous children teach me to eat spinach - I mean make pasta? :)

MIT Mommy said...

Amy - It was definitely yummie.

Anna - What can one expect from a middle-schooler? We need to bring you up to Camp Cleveland for some good quality, midwestern activities.

There Yet? - Of course. Do you just want just the lesson, or are you looking for a messy kitchen as well? We can accomodate all requests.

Indy said...

I hang my head in shame. I am sure we did almost close to nothing on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Flea said...

Oh how very cool. I've never made my own pasta. It looks like so much fun.

We made all kinds of salt dough critters over the MLK weekend. Messy, but even the teenagers got into the creative art.

MIT Mommy said...

Indy - Yes, and your house is pretty clean last I was over there .

Flea - Cool. Not sure what I'll do when they are teenagers. I guess I'm glad they only get older one day at a time (I seem to be on the accelerated program personally).