Fall Break = Fun, But Not Much of a "Break"

Last week (October 7-11) was Fall Break for most Sahuarita schools. I am starting to find the word "break" to be a bit of a misnomer; it may be true that the kids are home from school, but there is no "break" from anything...we are as busy as ever that week! I still held half of my usual piano lessons that week, but we also spent a lot of time running errands (some horribly dull, some necessary) and goofing off. Here are the highlights:

Monday:  We started the week off with a bang (or maybe a "boing?"); we visited Get Air Tucson, the new trampoline gym in town. Not the most beautiful building I've ever seen, but it was pretty exciting inside. There were a lot of kids there, and some of the older ones were quite athletic. There was a lot of flipping and twisting mid-air, with kids literally bouncing off the walls. It was a little intimidating at first; I was worried how my younger girls would handle it.

As it turns out, I needn't have worried. Aurora ran like a maniac all over the place, bouncing and squealing with joy everywhere. She did occasionally stumble, and once or twice a larger kid ran into her or even knocked her over. None of this fazed her even a bit; I knew Aurora was tough, but this trip showed me that she is even tougher than I thought.

Lorelai and Celeste also had a great time, especially when it came to jumping/falling into huge piles of foam cubes...

...and walking on tightropes, only to quickly fall into more huge piles of foam cubes.

Get Air was a little on the expensive side, but the kids had a great time. So great in fact, that Celeste and Aurora both fell asleep in the car on the way home...and it was only mid-morning! We'll definitely visit again.

Tuesday: This was the "do-nothing" day for our family (relatively speaking). We did meet up with some friends at the playground in the morning, and we fed dinner to the sister missionaries that evening, but in between those events was a lot of luxuriant laziness (and a lot of TV).

Wednesday: A day filled with lots of tedious errands, plus a little bit of fun here and there. Mostly, I drove around voluminous piles of old kids' clothes, trying to trade them in for store credit at various second-hand clothing stores in Tucson (I particularly like Twice As Nice, where I've found some pretty stylish clothes for myself and for the girls). I went to four different branches of the store; I ended up getting about $30-40 in store credit, then promptly spent it all on winter clothes for the girls. Such is life.

In between the seemingly endless clothes shopping, we also took Lorelai in for her annual doctor's appointment (she's doing great!), ate a quick lunch at Wendy's, and stopped by the Reid Park Zoo to welcome its newest residents:

There are two grizzly bears (we only saw one that day; I suspect it was the female bear) who have taken up residence in the old polar bear habitat, now refurbished for its new occupants. It was cool to see bears at the zoo once again; sadly, one of the polar bears passed away, and the zoo has had to transfer all its other polar bears to different zoos. I hope we will have many years to see these grizzly bears and get to know them!

Thursday: Another day of errands, albeit not as extensive or exhausting. Besides the usual CostCo trip, it was shoe-shopping time for the girls. Now they are set for the winter with warmer shoes for both church and school. Celeste in particular got a pair of "fur"-lined loafers that she is particularly proud of; I don't know how my middle daughter manages to make everything look so cute & stylish, but she manages it all the time.

Celeste is rockin' the loafers here, along with making a silly face...

Friday: I know summer is over, but I still thought of this as a Friday Family Fun Day; plus, Daddy got to join in the fun this time! The reason? Tucson Meet Yourself (an annual folk life festival) was going on downtown all weekend...and it was happening right outside Nathan's office! We had attended this festival last year as well, and were wowed by the dozens of food stalls, representing as many countries. This year, we vowed to sample foods from several different countries; we'd buy one item at each stall and share it as a family. The results were fun and delicious!

We started at my personal favorite, the Russian food booth, run by Kalina Restaurant in northeast Tucson. We bought two piroshki, one stuffed with carrots and the other with cabbage.

The restaurant owner, who ran the booth, even gave me a small cup of borscht because she was impressed that I spoke Russian to her (broken, shaky Russian though it was)! We then took some obligatory photos of ourselves as matroshka nesting dolls:

Lots more delicious food followed, including these steamed pork buns (a Chinese treat):

The kids loved these buns; we probably could have fed them on these all day.

These were followed by a buttered baked potato from the Columbia booth, smothered with onions and peppers. A bit blander than we expected, but not bad overall. The kids liked it more than Nathan and I did.

We ate in the shadow of this lovely building...the Tucson City Courthouse.

We tried out some Swedish meatballs next:

Aurora loved the meatballs!

Then nearby, we discovered a booth representing Thai cuisine. Time to try a chicken satay skewer!

This was Nathan's favorite food of the day. The meat was tender and well-seasoned, nutty and spicy. It has convinced him to try more Thai food. Thank goodness for that...I have been telling Nathan for years that Thai food was delicious. I guess he had to discover it for himself. Either way, now I can probably convince him to take me out for some Thai food for my birthday or another special occasion. Yay!

Time to go in search of more food!

...or just peer deep into the fountain, whatever. An evil part of me wanted to sneak up behind the girls and give them a tiny shove...

Next was the Greek booth, where I bought a gyro sandwich to share.

Right after that, Nathan headed for the El Guero Canelo booth. What's a multicultural food festival without a delicious Sonoran hot dog to share? That booth was (understandably) a little busy, so while we waited for Nathan to order, we took in an impromptu tango lesson offered at one of the many stages set up throughout the festival.

When Nathan brought over the Sonoran dog, it didn't last long. They never do.

By now, our bellies were pleasantly full and we'd done a lot of nice walking around on a warm, sunny day. It was time to wrap things up with dessert!

These are a sweet pastry called "aebleskiver"; they were offered at the Danish booth. They are a national delicacy, and are properly cooked in a special aebleskiver pan. They puff up as they cook, and their consistency and flavor is somewhere between a pancake and a donut. They were served dusted with powdered sugar, with red currant jam for dipping. They were incredibly delicious; now I think I have to ask for an aebleskiver pan for Christmas.

We wrapped up our day (and our Fall Break) by inviting our next-door neighbors the Gillespies over for dinner and a board game. They are LDS like us--we attend the same ward, in fact. They are very funny and sweet (plus their three kids are adorable). We have been too busy to get together properly the last few months, but it was great to hang out with them and get to know them better. Hopefully there will be more nights like that in our future.

We still had one more weekend left until school resumed...and what a busy weekend it was! In fact, it was a weekend deserving of its own blog post, so I'll stop here for now.