So here's the deal on Spring Break. It's either your best friend or your worst enemy. You're either yay a mini summer look how much fun we're having! Or you're all oh my gosh, we aren't going to make it. There's also the Spring Break pressure to consider. Are we going out of town? Do I have the energy for that? If we stay home am I a bad mom? Everyone else is going out of town. If I stay home does that make me lazy? Say you chose to stay home. Well now you have to fill the time. Seven days full of time. That's something to think about.
Now don't get me wrong. I really do enjoy school breaks. I love summer, Christmas break, Thanksgiving, long weekends. I generally enjoy them all. I like it when my kids are home. There's an inherent feeling of vacation when we don't have to be up. dressed and out the door by 7 a.m. Plus the lunch situation. Oh my gosh not having to make lunches at 6:30 in the morning is the best! The kids buy cheese pizza at school on Friday's and every Friday I love it because I kind of feel like I'm getting away with something a little bit. Buh bye I didn't make your lunch! Anyway I digress. We just finished up our Spring Break and this year we did in fact go out of town. We usually don't, we stay home and do fun local stuff. The kids enjoy museums and indoor obstacle courses. I try to make Spring Break feel a little bit special when we stay home, just for fun and also so that we don't kill each other.
We decided to take the advice of some friends and head up to Broken Bow Oklahoma. None of us had ever been and I had heard lots of good things about the Beavers Bend National Park, the cabins that are available to rent and just the general experience of "getting away". So we rented a cabin with some friends and headed north. If you've never vacationed with friends here is my advice. Choose wisely. We have vacationed with this family before and have a great time. Between the two families we have 8 children with my 11 year old as the oldest and my friend's 21 month old twins ending the party train. We rented a very large cabin. There were a lot of bodies. We love this other family and we know each other very well. That's super helpful. If you don't know each other before you go, you'll certainly know each other after you've spent the vacay in close quarters.
We stayed in the Turning Leaf cabin that we rented through Beavers Bend Getaways. It was a lovely and very spacious. The yard was awesome, everybody had a bed to sleep in, the cabin was clean with a fully equipped kitchen and game room. Our biggest complaint about the cabin itself was that it was right off the main road. There was a surprising amount of traffic so the noise from the cars took away from the "mountain getaway" feel. Entrance to the state park was free and we found some awesome hiking trails, fishing spots, and lake wading areas. Now doing all of those things with 8 children 2 of which are twins is not easy. Plus it was chilly and rainy our first day there. The town of Broken Bow does not have much to offer and also don't go grocery shopping at the Walmart. They don't have groceries. Go to Pruitt's, they have everything you need.
If you love to fish the trout fishing was great. If you own a boat you'll have a blast. There's a 16 mile loop hike that was wonderfully marked and while we only enjoyed 2 of the 16 miles (hello, 8 children) the hike was fun with great views. You can rent, canoe's, kayaks, paddle boards, mountain bikes and go horse back riding. We didn't do any of those things. We collected a lot of rocks and sticks. built a campfire every night, ate a lot of smore's, cooked a lot of food, and played outside from sun up to sun down. I don't know that I'll go back to Broken Bow but I'm definitely glad we went. It was a different, accessible vacation that got us outside doing new things.
I think people love it because it really does allow for time just to be together. The cell phone service was spotty so we were hardly on our phones at all and we didn't really interact with anyone other than each other. My kids are still pretty young and we spend A LOT of time together as a family. A. Lot. We play outside, we play board games, we talk about everything. People in my house talk all of the time. Seriously they never stop talking. So we didn't really need that kind of "get away" to spend quality time together but maybe as they get older and the teen years start to pull them away from home we'll need it more. Plus I am not a laid back person. Going up to a cabin and hanging out is not really my idea of a good time. I don't like to sit around unless I have a book and when there are 8 children in there house there is little to no reading. When I go out of town I like planned activities, I like to see stuff and try things. Which is why I think the hiking and lake exploring was my favorite part. Also the smore's, I'm a huge fan of smore's.
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