A Break to Celebrate Spring

This past week marked Spring Break, so we celebrated the rites of of the season with long {pollen-filled}, fun days, balancing a bit of deep spring cleaning with travels. A photo recap....

We started the week with a little green celebrating on St. Paddy's Day.

A bit o' sweet luck in the form of chocolate four-leaf clovers atop pretzels.

 Tax Man and I had a lovely evening with lovely friends to celebrate lovely Shannie's 33rd birthday {lovely, delicious green cake created by Ali}.

An impromptu shot of the crew.

Ladies.

Tax Man left town on Sunday for a busy week of tax things out of town, while peanut and I worked on a bit of clean-up. You know... pressure washing, window washing, curtain cleaning, organization type cleaning {I can't adequately thank my mom for all the help... definitely owe her a pedicure, and probably a manicure too!}.

After the dirty work, we did a bit of {slightly} fun decorating/type work - like staining the Adirondack chairs.

This kid is perfectly happy to paint anything.

So I took full advantage of it.

 A day-and-a-half of spring cleaning duties was plenty enough for us, so we headed on a eastward course.

First, a quick stop to enjoy a bit of baseball....

 And to gather a sweet little boy to accompany us for a few days.

 A visit at the Jacksonville Zoo...

Third time around on the carousel and I was pretty nauseous...

But these two would've gone forever!

A little giraffe feeding...

If you run out of leaves, apparently a chubby little finger will do.

 Lots of sweet snuggles {perfectly balanced with plenty of mommy playing referee}...

And the reality check that I no longer even have a toddler... 

She is seriously growing too fast.

 We returned home to a happy daddy on Friday, with plenty of time for some spring seed sowing...

Reasonably certain nothing will ever sprout from these - she drowns them in water daily.

A little rye grass started for green Easter display {we'll see if I can manage to grow it}.

 An extremely fun Simply Sprout educational event on Sunday afternoon...

Followed by a delicious, end of Spring Break dinner enjoyed on the patio, including Potato Tortilla from The Happy Everything Cookbook by Coton Colors {deemed the most delicious potatoes ever by the most discerning food critic ever}...

 A little grill action...

A dark shot of the chairs with one coat. I think we'll add a second.

 Pork Chops, Chopped Salad... all from aforementioned cookbook... yum!

 
Definitely a week of smiles. Thanks to my Aunt for the wonderful hospitality. I grew up spending many a-summer playing in her pool, so it was definitely a delight to have LE and her sweet cousin together to make new memories. This marks the 2nd Spring Break that peanut and I have enjoyed a couple of days together in Jacksonville. As long as we keep our Tax Man around {and we don't plan on getting rid of him anytime soon}, it appears he won't have any kind of break in the spring season, so this may be our new tradition.

And now the spring races have officially begun... let's see how incredibly fast the next two months fly by!