Spring Break '11

This year we decided to have a quiet spring break at home.  The week started with some promise with temps around 50.  I got each boy out on their bike for a lap around the 'hood as I ran.  But it wasn't warm.  We were fooling ourselves.  The wind was raw and their hands were freezing.  And then it started to rain.  And then the snow.  And it's been real hard watching so many friends and relatives bail out to warmer climates.  So we had to do something.  Hence our soon to happen Spring Break '11 trip to the south.  We leave soon from departure gate Brimhall with the NeskeMoens and head directly south to a spring break mecca:  The SPAM museum in Austin.  Minnesota.  Not Texas.  The website promises meetings with SPAMbassadors, free samples, and interactive museum exhibits where you can try your hand at packing SPAM.  Can't wait!  The free samples may even lure me away from 20 years of vegetarianism.  I mean, my only fond childhood meat memories are of boxcars- those campfire delights were you take a slab of SPAM, sprinkle it with brown sugar, throw on a pineapple ring, wrap it in tinfoil, and throw it into the coals.  Loved those. 

After SPAMville, we'll head west, with perhaps a stop at the Jolly Green Giant statue in Blue Earth and then on to poolside rooms at the Holiday Inn in Fairmont, where some good pals reside.  Not in the Holiday Inn.  In Fairmont.  They promise to join us poolside with coolers and games and some good laughs.  I'm hoping I can find myself one of those styrofoam can holder things and my flipflops before we go so I really feel like I'm on vacation.  We splurged and are spending two whole nights in the hotel, thus maximizing our exposure to chlorine. 

Throw in free kids meals at the attached GreenMill, and we've just about hit vacation paradise for Eli.  Noodles, swimming with friends, and a promised epic nerf gun battle back at the home of our Fairmont friends.  I dare say that my boys are just as excited for this little weekend getaway as they were for our spring break trip to Peru last year.  I'm not kidding.