Spring Break Fun

After returning home from our fun weekend at UNR we welcomed Matt's parents for a visit.  It was nice to have them visit while there were no worries about school/sport schedules.  The first day of their visit we headed to the Legends mall.

We started the day out walking around the marina.  It is about a 2 mile loop with a beautiful view of the mountains.

We took a break halfway around to stop at the playground.

There were a few trees in full bloom, and some of us took time to stop and smell the flowers.

We ate lunch at Scheels and did a little shopping at some of our favorite stores.

Some of it was dream shopping...

but I think everyone left with a little something.

Matt and Chase bought the game RISK (Europe edition) and spent a good part of the night arguing playing.  The game lasted for DAYS...I kid you not.....DAYS.

We had fun playing games and watching movies together in the evenings.  Of course there is always a little showing off for the grandparents.  Sadi was showing off her Cheer skills and teaching Grandpa how to cheer.

He is always a good sport...I mean who else's Grandpa has moves like this?

It was a good laugh for everyone watching this cheer squad.

Day 2 of break we met up with Great Grandma for breakfast at Black Bear Diner.  We always love spending time and catching up with her.

 After that big breakfast we headed to Reno to spend the day at the Discovery museum.

It is such a fun museum that has lots of hands on exhibits. 

Matt and Chase had fun sending/decoding a secret message via Morris Code....of course had to involve the word poop...BOYS.

 

We found the BIG piano and danced a tune. 

Matt played Mary had a little lamb.  His parents commented on how much they spent on piano lessons.  This is the results....

The boys built the Arch in the building room.  Believe me it's harder than it looks.

I think the kids favorite exhibit is the cloud climber.  Once the field trip kids had left the museum they had it all to themselves.  We spent all day there exploring and playing.

Day 3-Grandma and Grandpa were off visiting other family and so we took the kids to a park in Reno I have wanted to go check out for a very long time.  Turns out the playground wasn't that great, and kind of dirty so we walked to the Arboretum that is within the park.

 

It's a decent trail, but the time of year wasn't much to see...spring hasn't quite sprung here yet.  I would love to go back in the fall.  There are tons of trees. 

 

We found one unmarked tree that smelled of skunk....not sure if the tree got sprayed or this is actually what it's suppose to smell like?

Part of the park had an area with some Basque artifacts.  Matt has Basque relatives and so we took a short drive up the hill to see this huge Basque monument. 

We were even able to find his ancestors name on the wall.

We met up with Grandma and Grandpa later that day for lunch at the mall.  We did a little shopping and discovered this hot spot....

Matt headed back to work mid-week and his parents headed home so it was just me and the kids for the rest of the week.  The weather was turning cold and we were about to get hit with another storm so we spent Thursday at the Hot Springs in Carson City.  We enjoyed soaking up the last of the sun before the rain came in later that day.

 

Since the forecast was for rain/possible snow on Friday we headed for some indoor fun at the bowling ally.

 

Sadi beat both Chase and I pretty good the first game....although she had bumpers this kid knew how to knock em' down.

Last stop of the day was to the big library in Carson City.  See that tall stack of silence...quietest ride home EVER.

Backing up to the beginning of the week I had bought the kids a little surprise to put an extra "spring" in their spring break.

Kid style fit bits!  These are pretty cool, and are partnered with UNICEF.  With a downloaded app their steps earn therapeutic food packets around the world for children.  I also enticed them with a separate challenge-whoever had the most steps in by the end of the week would win a prize.

Sadi was VERY into this, and literally ran circles around Chase.  It's a fun way to get active and also teach them about those less fortunate around the world.  Amazing the avenues they chose to walk just to get the extra steps.

At the end of the week it was time to total up their steps.  Sadi was right around 107,000...beating Chase by over 30,000 steps.  The prize was a $5 Maverick card which she had no problem spending every dollar.  Probably bought enough sugar to erase every single step :/

All good things come to an end, as did our break from school.  Our last night before heading back to school we were debating our dinner options.  Sadi wanted to do a progressive dinner (she had done something similar to this at a recent birthday party).  We decided to do a home town style progressive dinner.  We started with appetizers at 1st and 10 Grille.  We tried the Dayton Dust devil...yummy fried onions.

The main course was kids choice..Jack in the box. 

Our final course dessert, was from Maverick.  Someone (Matt) didn't leave any room for dessert.

It was pretty fun idea and great ending to our last night before back to our regularly scheduled week.

Spring Break Kickoff

The weekend of our Spring Break was also family weekend at UNR.  This is a completely free event put on by the Student Union for families, and they packed it with all kinds of fun events.  It started Friday evening but we ended up having other obligations and weren't able to make it to the family bowling but we started bright and early Saturday morning with a breakfast on the KC lawn.

They had events the entire weekend you could attend.  The first was campus tours following breakfast.  Since we have all toured the campus multiple times we opted to wander around campus and play.  We played football on the quad for hours.

The weather was beautiful and we all got a little bit sun kissed that day.

There were so many things to do there that fitting it all into one day was tricky.  We spent some time in the Keck museum looking at all the minerals and rocks.  We also admired this huge sculpture that was designed with the help of student from the engineering and arts department.  It's titled "Inside the mind of Di Vinci.

It's pretty huge standing at 10'x23'.  On the inside of the head there are all kinds of 3D sculptures representing what was inside his mind...pretty cool.

They had lunch catered by Qdoba and also had boxed lunches for those crazy kids who don't like Mexican, which were equally as delicious.  After lunch we headed to the new gym they just completed to check it out.  It is HUGE.

Chase gave a shot at the workout stairs carrying what he thought was a ten pound weight up it...turns out it was 22 lbs. He didn't quite make it to the top.

The girls raced a few laps around the track that is up on the second floor.  Love that there are windows circling the entire gym you can look out while you are running, but not sure what those suicide doors are all about?

Then it was time to workout those arms on the rowing machines.  Sadi loved these and could have rowed all day.

After the gym we went and watched Moana in one of their lecture halls.  After that we walked to the Fleishmann planetarium (also on campus) which was also free for the weekend.  I neglected to get any pictures in there, its a bit small an unimpressive.  The last event of the day was a magic show.  Not sure why someone wasn't too happy in this picture, I think she ended up being the most mesmerized and fun to watch.

It was a long day...sun up to sun down, but spent with our favorite college girl.  We headed home to get a little sleep before day 2 on campus.

We headed back up on Sunday for a Reno rodeo themed BBQ and family rodeo games.  We ate lunch and played some games, but probably the highlight was riding the mechanical bull.  All the kids got a shot at 8 seconds of fame...

We all had the best time hanging around campus all weekend.  It came to an end all to quickly and it was back to school for Kelsey, but for us it was just the start of spring break.