Holidays are a wonderful time to spend with the people you love. They are also a time filled with traditions and expectations. I love celebrating my favourite traditions every year and creating new traditions for our family (that’s why I opted for Bilbo, the Engagement Cat instead of a diamond).
Traditionally we would travel on a long weekend to spend time with out of town family. This year, we decided to stay in town to get the most out of our four days off. I was a bit worried about the decision, but I’m very happy with how it turned out.
Getting a Start on Spring Cleaning
Friday was a beautiful day here. It’s been hovering just over freezing here lately, but on Friday it was sunny and warm. We took another stay at organizing our garage and found a porch full of stuff to give away to our neighbours on Facebook.
Combined with the stuff we’ve sold recently (I think we made $400 last month), I can finally start to see how I’d like the garage to function for us. We’ve decided to not park our car in there because it’s pretty tight and would be tough getting the Little Miss into her car seat.
I’m hoping we tackle the inside clutter when it’s warm enough to air the house out and start our spring “actual” cleaning.
Tuning up the Bikes
We dug our bikes out of the garage and did some basic tune ups. We fixed a flat and pumped up the tired. Chains were lubed. That’s about the extent of it, but it was good enough for us to get back out there. We took turns going for rides around the neighbourhood.
It felt so nice to be outside without my parka on!
Afterwards, I finally got around to ordering an extra bike trailer hitch online so that it will be easy to hook the trailer up to either bike when we want to take the Little Miss out for a spin. It will be so much easier to do errands by bike this summer!
Shoe Shopping
Saturday we braved the hoards of people out trying to get three days of shopping done in one to pick up some new warm weather shoes.
I’m still looking for a pair, but the Mr. and the Little Miss both found some awesome rain boots to enjoy the puddles. Simple Cheap Dad also scored a new pair of casual shoes to replace his that was falling apart.
The Little Miss gave me another “I’m shopping wrong” moment. At the first store, she was given some stickers because she was brave enough to have her feet measured. (Why don’t I get stickers for that?) She proudly stuck one on her jacket. When she informed the sales lady at the second store that her sticker had fallen off, she was given a free ball as a replacement. I’d really like to learn her ways.
Visiting Friends and Family
While I did miss my out of town family, we did get a chance to visit with family, some family friends visiting, and our friends we don’t see enough.
Celebrating Easter
The Easter Bunny visited our house and “made a mess” with chocolate everywhere. He also brought some fun spring toys like bubbles, chalk and a skipping rope. We were also treated to a yummy dinner at our in-laws.
Replacing the Car Battery
We’ve known that our battery would need to be replaced for a few weeks now. We were thinking of having someone else do the swap because our radio was still locked from when we’d taken the battery out in the fall. So we needed help. In the end, we decided to do the swap ourselves.
We were hoping the new battery (then the new fuse) would somehow make our radio instantly un-lockable. It didn’t. Neither did me driving around for an hour and a half. We have the unlock code, but there’s nowhere to enter it because our display screen is blank. Our old mechanic said they don’t deal with that stuff, so it’s time to find a new mechanic!
Conclusion
This Easter weekend, instead of heading to spend the weekend without of town family, we decided to stay at home.
We managed to spend time relaxing together as a family and to knock some annoying items off our to-do list. I feel like we’re much more rejuvenated coming out of this weekend than we would have been if we’d had to spend hours in holiday traffic travelling, had to transport Bilbo (who’d been sick last week) to the “cat spa” (the in-laws), and had to worry about all the little things that weren’t getting done around the house.
I’m happy that we didn’t force ourselves to rigidly stick to all traditions. I enjoyed our weekend together and am also looking forward to scheduling our next trip to visit out of town family.
What About You?
Was your long weekend busy or relaxing?
How often do you visit family out of town?
Did you break any traditions this year?
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