Spring Break and Poison Ivy

The boys had Spring Break a couple weeks ago,  I had basically nothing planned for the week, which is fine by me because I still carry on with life as normal and just leave the oldest four boys home by themselves to play on screens. The reason this is more OK with me now than it used to be is because we have recently done away with screens during the week! For so long, I was literally afraid to turn the screens off. I thought I would go crazy and the boys would go crazy and it would be so unfair to them. But, one lovely day in February after Stake Conference I was ready to make the commitment. I must say, It has been WONDERFUL! The boys fought the idea quite a bit the first week, but after that they were OK. It is so nice not to be a slave to the screens now. The boys love computer games, so I always felt like I was making sure each boy got his full hour on the computer and it was ridiculous.  Now, back to spring break, I let them play screens while I would go to the gym and run errands in the morning, and it really made their spring break exciting for them.

One other thing, during the week I was feeling bad that I hadn't made the best of their break and then it dawned on me that in our school district we have week long breaks constantly throughout the year. We have five breaks that are at least a week long each, so I didn't really feel like I needed to make this one extra special. It was just another break.

But, anyway.. here are the things we did end up doing. On Monday the neighbor stayed with us for the day while his parents were at work and we went to the library and then to the park and had lunch at Taco Bell. On two of the days we went to the indoor pool and swam for a couple of hours. That was a hit!
On Friday I took them to IHOP for breakfast for happy face pancakes. It was a lovely week.

Then on Saturday I took the cub scouts, Jacob and Nathan, to a day camp with some other boys from the ward. It was a nice day. Unfortunately I have boys that are really good at finding things to complain about, but we stayed regardless and had a great time.

{Learning how people used to write with ink and quill}

 

{armor in medieval times}

 

{she is teaching the boys about games played in England and what words they use differently than us}

 

{Lunch time}

 

{Archery!}

On Sunday Nathan was complaining  about something itching on his face. I just told him to scratch it. :-)
By Monday he had a bit of a rash going straight down his forehead. I still sent him to school with some anti itch cream on, but by Tuesday this is what he looked like. (Sorry about the cheap cell phone pictures, but let me just tell you, it looked HORRIBLE!)

 

 This was obviously something more than I was familiar with. He had it on his neck, and back and it was swelling and had pussy blisters all over it, so we headed to the Dr. He wasn't very helpful in letting us know what Nathan got into, but we did end up with some cream to get rid of it. As I talked to people, so many told me that it was obviously poison ivy. N must be very allergic to it because it was so bad! I think it spread so bad by him itching it, and then spreading it. I let him take a couple of days off of school just to avoid the stares and comments. It didn't hurt him and it wasn't contagious, it was just in such an obvious place!

This is what he looked like 3 days later. And now he is back to his handsome self.

 

We will definitely be more careful in the woods around here, and I think I my just need to lock Nathan up before the boy kills himself!