pffftt! who needs daytona beach??

Things are finally winding down and getting back to "normal" here at Rancho McBirdie. We had a kick ass spring break -totally different than any of our other 'vacations', because the family went in different directions (which may be the secret of our success!? lol), but we were busy and it was fun.

Jack had to work (work, Jack, work) and Andrew was busy building fence with his cousin Nate out at the ranch so Matt, Kendall and I left Friday after they got out of school and made the trek down to the clov-i to hang with Shayna and her gang. It's always SO good to see her and I love how the kids seem to pick up right where they left off ... it didn't take them long to figure out that they were on their own as far as entertaining themselves. They swam, played video games, and did a pretty good job of staying under the radar, freeing up the adults to drink margi's, tip back some beeyahs, and play a few cut-throat rounds of dominos (because, according to Bennett, that's what old peeps do), oh yeah... we're wild like that.

Saturday the kids colored eggs and the Easter bunny, along with her trusty sidekick, did a smashing (literally) job of hiding them. The next morning, the little grills pranced around the yard, hunting down the mangled eggs that the dogs hadn't already managed to liberate. After a delicious Easter dinner, we all hastened on down to the local bowling alley where a) we were entirely too high maintenance when it comes to renting shoes 2) were a little challenged by the automatic scoring machine, and c) Shayna kicked me arse in a bowling throwdown. I must say though, I was one proud mama when my girl managed to loft her ball onto the lane NEXT to us and then later, had an apparent 'early release' and sort of erm, threw the ball behind her... can't even imagine what might have happened if we hadn't been using bumpers! No doubt the PBA scouts would have our phone ringing off the hook ...if only our number weren't unlisted. *sigh*

As usual, I hated to leave so we stuck around for an extra day and got to see some other friends who came to visit (pffftt! go figure -they live within 10 minutes of me but I travel 8 freaking hours and see them!). I'm wondering if Shayna's fully recovered yet... at one point there were 5 adults and 9 kids bunking in her house. Crazy as it sounds, the kids were great and it was loads of fun! I laughed me arse off with Shayna over our retarded inside jokes, Doyle's goofy faces, Renee and her velcro pajamas and omg her 'my mom only has one eye' story will be a classic I'm sure. ...gooood times.

After a long drive home Tuesday night, I saw Andrew for about 20 min. before he headed over to Nate's house for the night, so they could get an early start over to Redding/Mt. Shasta to snowboard and stay with our friend Michelle (my kids' godmother). Thursday night Jack hooked up the boat and he, Matt and Kendall headed over to Shasta Lake to fish ...and to stay with Michelle. I had a few things to do so I stayed home and ran some errands with Pop, and then drove over on Friday night. We haven't seen these guys since last July/August so we had lots of catching up to do and we stayed up way too late.

Durring the days some of the guys went fishing and some went snowboarding, the girls just hung out and in the evenings all the kids played video games. Michelle and Jim took me around to show me some of the houses they've been looking at -kinda cool to see what's out there, totally can't believe how much the Redding area has grown.

Saturday night we took everyone out to Logan's Roadhouse for dinner to celebrate Tatum's 11th birthday. I'd never been there but it had a fun atomsphere and what's not to love about a place where you can throw peanut shells on the floor?! On a personal note, I learned it's not wise to start a peanut fight while wearing a low cut blouse -the upside here, is that with all that I brought home in my bra, I will be set once winter rolls back around.