Our own private sand dunes on No School Friday.

Climbing the dunes

I remember the days, not so long ago, when "no school" inevitably meant "jump through hoops to entertain 4 kids." As a disclaimer, my kids would all be entertained indefinitely by electronics, but I'm one of those nuts who likes her kids to do "real" things like hiking, swimming, playing tennis, or frequenting museums, so my kids almost never get to just sit in front of the TV in pajamas all day. My son had a pen-pal from another school when he was in 3rd grade. The pen-pal was named Jesus Diaz,which my son found very cool even after I taught him to pronounce it the right way and NOT the Bible way. Every week he received a crisp, stamped letter in the mail from Jesus, and it became apparent that in the Diaz casa video games were not El Diablo like they were in our home. Every letter described Jesus's weekly gaming triumphs, and my little Mason began to feel disenfranchised and deprived. I asked if he wanted to dust off the old Wii and play a few games which he did, with much enthusiasm. But Mason was used to doing more active activities, and after a while he put down the Wii remote thingy and headed outside to skateboard with the neighbors. He said later that "Jesus just pretends to do stuff, but he's not really doing it." Very profound. Sometimes I wish we were just pretending to "do stuff" because it's easier, but I have a screw loose somewhere in my noggin that just won't allow me to let my kids wallow in cable-induced comas.

Brody at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon

    So school holidays usually required a high degree of planning and coordinating. Until our move from the city, I had multiple passes to various venues including the Phoenix Zoo, Science Museum, Natural History Museum (full of awesome mechanical dinosaurs and a bellowing mammoth), and a rock climbing gym. We also lived in a country club community with multiple parks, sports fields, basketball courts, swimming pools, golf, tennis, hiking and biking trails, and more. Additionally, I had multiple park passes, a Tonto National Forest pass, and annual passes to several scenic sites where we could picnic, hike, and enjoy nature. Plus our annual pass to Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri a thousand miles away. And we had a POGO Pass which got us into Diamondback games, amusement parks, paintball, laser tag, and oh my gosh no wonder I'm worn out at age 39. Seriously.
    By way of example, we had both a Friday and the following Monday off in October last year, so to me that just screamed last minute Grand Canyon adventure. Thus I spent Tuesday through Thursday booking hotels and packing. Good times for sure, but very complicated and expensive and tiring with a family of six. Just ordering six different ice cream cones at the Grand Canyon snack shack was complicated, expensive and tiring. And those three words embodied every No School weekend.

 

Me and Brodes on my way-too-fast ATV

 But now we live in the South, in a tiny town where there aren't any Natural History Museums or zoos or tourist traps, so last Friday we had the best and most relaxing No School day ever. We have a family full of new ATV's for deer hunting season, and friends with hundreds of acres of land in Bearden, Arkansas where the quietude of wind shuffling yellowed leaves in the oaks is interrupted only by the splash of a beaver skimming through his lily pad trail in the pond. The men took off on the Polaris Ranger to check the catfish lines, and I took two giggling girls and little Brody to enjoy the whole afternoon climbing our own private sand dunes. When a cluster of black storm clouds crept over the treetops and I called for a retreat, I realized that I was very far from civilization, much further than city girls usually get. It took hard fast riding through mud puddles to make it back to the farm before the dark and cold swallowed us up. The men pulled their first fat catfish of the week off the traut line that evening using Zote Soap for bait. The catfish go crazy for Zote Soap, which is a handy tip if you're a clueless city person. We finished the afternoon with hot cocoa at the kitchen island in Melinda Davison's beautiful warm farm kitchen, surrounded by honey colored cupboards and shelves full of shining fire-engine red ceramics, antique chickens, and a truly impressive collection of hot sauces from around the world. It was the perfect day because it blended relaxation and recreation in optimal proportions with minimal effort. Where has the South been all my life?