Spring Break - Part 1 - Boise

If you know me you know that I'm a little obsessed with calendars and lists. When my sister Lindsey was visiting last summer she looked around my kitchen and saw my long wall calendar that shows at least 6 months at a time, my summer calendar that showed the three months of summer, a list of summer "bucket list" activities, and my list of things I need to do in a month. She jokingly asked, "at what point should I do an intervention?"

But my obsession with time leads to some good outcomes. Thanks to my long wall calendar I could see that the kids spring break started the day after the play ended. And so, back in January I started bugging Brandon about taking the week of spring break off of work. 

I knew we'd all be tired after the play and that we'd all want a few days to relax as a family. And I knew - because this happened over Christmas - that Brandon would be grumpy if he had to work while the kids and I were home. So I told Brandon to request Spring break off. 

He wasn't sure his company would approve a whole week off, but I kept bugging and bugging him about it.  I was like, "Just ask for it off.  Even if they say no at least you asked."

He finally asked and miraculously they approved the whole week off. Yes!

Then it was time to plan what we'd do with that whole week. Last year we went to Nevada and had a lovely time there. But this year I wanted to stay closer to home. We were in Utah so much last year because of Lagoon passes that we kind of ignored Idaho. So I wanted to give Idaho some love. 

I realized that it's been FOUR years since we've been to Boise. The only time we've been to Boise since before we moved to Twin Falls was when the kids and Brandon dropped me off at the airport in 2021. Pandemics and Lagoon Passes have kept us from going to Boise for any sort of visit.  So I decided we should spend some of our Spring Break in Boise. I only wanted to spend some of the time there because I wanted to spent the other half of our vacation doing some major work on the garage. 

I figured two nights in Boise would be perfect for a little get away. I started looking at hotels, but couldn't find anything that worked really well. Last year when we were in Ely we were able to stay in a suite that had two rooms - with DOORS - and then a pull out bed in the main area. I was hoping to find something like that again, but the only thing in our price range was two rooms that were separated by an arch way.  Maybe if we were just staying there overnight that would have worked, but for two nights/three days we wanted a big more privacy. 

So I checked Vrbo and found a super cute house. It was small, but it had three rooms with their own doors. It also had a little kitchen which would allow us to cook some of the meals. And it was about $50 cheaper than the hotel would be.  So I booked that right away. 

I found myself day dreaming about that house over the next few weeks. 

On Monday the kids slept in and so did Brandon. He was so happy to be home. I still had work, but that was my choice more than anything. I could have taken it off, but I figured it would be better for my work load if I went in and got a lot done on Monday morning.  Then I could leave and mentally forget about work until Thursday afternoon. It worked out really well. 

Brandon and the kids packed their things and then packed the van. (I was so happy that I wasn't in charge of this for once.) I came home from work and we had lunch and then we started driving to Boise. 

Boise is about 2 hours away. We told the kids not to watch a movie and to enjoy looking out the window.  There was a big storm cloud to the south-west of us. We watched it move by. It was headed straight for Twin Falls. 

Charlotte and Lydia had brought their makeup bag and had fun doing each other's make up and then putting some on Veronica.  There was a lot of giggling going on.

When we arrived in Boise the kids were like, "We're here already!" It was much closer than Utah so they were happy about that. 

We followed the google map directions to the little house. It was in the University District a few blocks from the football stadium. It was just as cute in person as it was online. 

We brought our things in and settled in.  I went around and took pictures. 

Here's the little living room.

The kitchen was in back of the living room.  There was a little counter with chairs and then a dining room with four chairs. 

This was the kitchen. The bathroom was through that door, but somehow I never got a picture of that room. It was cute too. 

The house had three bedrooms.  One was off the livingroom. And the other two were down a small hallway. 

Here's Veronica on her bed. 

She shared a room with Derrick. He slept on a futon, but somehow I missed a picture of that too.

Here's Brandon on our bed. 

We had this cute little chair in our room.

And here's the twins room. They shared this bed. 

The kids turned on the TV and started watching a movie. Brandon and I were planning to run to Wendy's for dinner. We realized that we'd forgot the bag with all the fridge food in our fridge at home. (This is becoming a spring break tradition.) So we first went to Fred Meyer and bought food and then we went to Wendy's and picked up dinner. 

Here's Charlotte and Lydia eating at that little counter. 

Derrick and Veronica at the table.

All four kids. 

After dinner we had frostys for dessert.

We ran into a bit of a problem after dinner. We all had VERY different expectations for this trip. Basically we were in two camps.  Brandon, Charlotte, and Lydia had just finished the play. They'd been super busy nearly every night for two weeks. They wanted to sit and relax and do nothing. 

On the other hand, Derrick, Veronica, and I had been home nearly every night for the past two weeks. We were bored and wanted to do things maybe even go somewhere. 

The end result was we were all slightly on each other's nerves in a house that was slightly too small for a bunch of people who were on each other's nerves to be in together. 

But we figured it out. Brandon got on Netflix and picked out The Mask of Zorro for all of us to watch.  Most of the kids liked most of the movie. 

After the movie we played a game that Charlotte really liked playing at school. We'd bought it to bring on this trip. It's called Treat or Trash. It was fun.  Brandon made it funnier, but talking in a silly voice every time it was his turn. 

Derrick found a toy car and played with that. 

We went to bed around 10:00. Everyone said their beds were really comfortable. 

We woke up to a little bit of snow on the ground the next day.  Happy first day of spring everyone. ]

We had breakfast and then we got ready to do some sightseeing. 

I wanted to recreate the "Fourth Grade Field Trip" that the kids would have gone on if COVID hadn't disrupted everything. The fourth grade field trip was a big deal. The kids would take busses to Boise and then toured the capital and then the Old Idaho Penitentiary. They would have been gone all day. 

 Charlotte and Lydia were home schooled in 4th grade, but even if they'd been in public school they would have missed the field trip because the capital was closed to visitors in 2021.  Derrick missed the field trip too because no one knew if the capital would be open in the spring on 2022 and when it was open it was too late to schedule busses. 

Veronica is only in 3rd grade, but this years the 4th graders had a pioneer experience come to them instead of planning a trip to Boise.  It sounds like that's what they are planning for next year too. So it doesn't seem likely that Veronica will go on a trip to Boise in 4th grade. 

Which means we were going to do the field trip experience as a family. 

Our first stop for the day was the Capital Building in Down Town Boise. It was about 7 minutes from our house. The kids were so impressed by all the tall buildings. Derrick and I had looked at a guidebook the night before. I'd shown him the capital in that book. So when we drove down the street and he could see it he got really excited. 

Our first lesson of the day was how to pay for public parking.  I took this picture of the kids reading off the license plate to me, while I relayed the numbers to Brandon, while he typed them into the parking kiosk. 

Then we walked across the street to the capital building.  We recently watched National Treasure so Derrick kept saying, "It's like it National Treasure!"  Meaning the US Capital. 

We found our way to the visitor area in the basement.  There were lots of displays down there. 

We could have taken an official tour, but we aren't really the tour group type. So we just did a self guided tour. Here's the view looking up toward the dome. Charlotte had said she'd want her office in the very top. That was before she saw that the dome was open. 

The building had a lot of white marble. It was really pretty - and echoy.

There were about three different places you could overlook the big space under the dome. 

This was a display about Idaho Agriculture. It says one Idaho Farm feeds 166 people each year. It's surrounded by 166 plates and forks. 

I took this picture of the sign, but I like Veronica's awed expression.

Here's looking up at the dome. That's a huge Idaho flag hanging down.

Going up the stairs. 

Proof I was there.

Looking down.

A statue of George Washington that was carved out of pine and then painted gold. 

Here's a view of the park in front of the capitol.

There was a display of dresses worn by the first lady's of Idaho. Veronica wanted to pose like she was wearing the dress.

Lydia did too.

And then Charlotte. 

Another view of looking down.

We were done with the capital building after about an hour, but we'd paid for 2 hours of parking.  So we went for a walk around downtown. We all liked this cool art outside a hotel.

Here it is upclose. 

Okay, I realized that Brandon actually has been to Boise more recently than 4 years ago.  He went to the writers conference here last May. While he was in Boise he saw this cool building.  So he took us there to look at it. It was for something called Jump.

Outside there were slides that said they were closed for the season. 

And this cool structure the kids immediately played on.

Brandon went inside to find out what this place was. It was some sort of community center. Different classes in art and dance and other things were taught there. It also had room for conventions and other gathernings. But the public was free to wander the grounds. 

The lobby was decorated like under the see.  This was a submarine. 

And a sea monster. 

It was pretty cool.

We wandered around the building - which was kind of strange because it's built more as modules than as one building. A lot of it was outside space. Here's a cool chair the kids found. 

The view from one of the upper levels. 

I liked "The Deck."  I wanted to figure out a way to host a BBQ here. 

We found the top part of the slide. 

And another slide.  The kids want to come back here when the slides are open.

When we were done at Jump we started walking back to the car. We passed these trees with spiking seed pods.  We called them covid trees. 

We made it back to the car and then drove back to our house for lunch. We had sandwiches. Here are the kids eating. 

The kids had discovered the cartoon version of Carmen Sandiego on Netflix so they watched an episode or two while Brandon and I took a nap.  

Then we drove over to the Old Idaho Penitentiary for the second half of our family's version of the 4th grade field trip. 

The Penitentiary was in use from like 1890 until the 1970's. Now it's a historic site. It's one of three old prisons that you can tour in the United States. 

We paid for our tickets and then went through these big Iron bar doors to enter the yard area. 

There were a lot of stone buildings in the yard area. 

We could just kind of wander around and look at what ever interested us.  Derrick had a map and liked pointing things out. There were also signs on the buildings. 

This one was burned out.  We found out later it had burned during a prison riot in the 70's about a year before all the inmates were moved to the new prison.  They'd just kind of lived with the rubble after the riot. 

Some of the smaller buildings had displays inside. 

Here are me and Derrick in "The cooler."

This was the laundry facility.

There was a building with a weapons collection. This wasn't really part of the penitentiary, but someone had donated it and this is where it was on display.  It had all sorts of displays from various wars.  This one was from World War I and showed a machine gun and trench warfare. I started explaining it to Lydia and she said, "Mom, I grew up on an Army Base. I know what this was for."

This was the grave for the prison cat, Dennis. 

I liked the guard tower. 

We found the cell block buildings. The kids were like, "Finally we get to see some prison cells in this prison."

The cells were so tiny.

In another building we could go up to the second floor of the cell block.

It was crazy to think about all the people who had lived here. 

Derrick and Veronica wanted to act like they were trapped. 

One building had the gallows where at least one prisoner had been executed. 

Here's the burned out church again. 

Outside the Main prison was the women's prison. It was much smaller.

As we were leaving we ran into some people we knew. It was Rachel from the play and her husband who had been the kids school counselor 3 years ago. It was so random to run into them. 

Then we went back home and hung out some more.  We'd finally all equalized on what we wanted this trip to be. Mostly we just wanted to relax. The kids really enjoyed watching Carmen Sandiago. I found a book about the Civil War that was very interesting. 

Brandon and I made taco salad for dinner. It was super ymmy.

The kids alternated with who sat where. 

Here are me and Brandon. 

I'd talked about maybe going for a walk on the riverwalk that evening. But no one was really interested in doing that - including me. So we just hung around some more that evening. It was nice. 

In the morning we had breakfast and then packed up our stuff. We cleaned the house a bit and then said goodbye to it.  We will definitely come back here. 

We weren't done with Boise yet. We had one more place we wanted to go.  The Aquarium!

It's funny, because if you asked me when the last time I took the kids to the aquarium I'd tell you it was like a year or so ago.  But when I actually thought about it I realized that the last time we went to an aquarium was for Derrick's birthday - in 2019! That was four years ago. I can't believe its been so long.  Especially since my kids love ocean life. That's what Pandemics and Lagoon Passes will do. 

So I wanted to make sure we went to the aquarium while we were in Boise. It was a little expensive so I told the kids, "We are going to stay here for 2 hours and if any of you fight you have to pay me back."

But within a few minutes of entering the aquarium I knew we were getting our money's worth.  There was a touch tank right when you entered the main part of the Aquarium. The kids were so happy to put their hands in the water and try to touch the fish.

Then we walked around and looked at other fish in little tanks. We found Nemo right off the bat. 

We saw a tank with a HUGE Grouper in it and so we skipped a bunch of displays and went right to that. 

That tank had a very friendly ray in it too. The ray was named Miss Piggy.  When I got my camera out she moved up and down like she liked the attention. 

There was another tank with fish that would come up and suck the dead skin off your hands. 

Brandon was the first one who dared let the fish suck on his hands. 

Here's Miss Piggy again. I liked her.

More sucky fish.

I forgot what these fish were called, but they were big too.

Another tank.

There was a little bird feeding area. This had been one of Charlotte's favorite things at the Aquarium in Idaho Falls so I wanted the kids to do it again. But I was kind of doing it begrudgingly because the bird feeding area in Idaho Falls had been really chaotic. I ended up being really impressed by this one.  They only let two people go in at a time. And when I'd paid for it I'd been prepared to pay $3 for each of the kids.  But the lady at the counter told me, "Oh the birds won't eat that much.  I'll just charge you for two feedings and we'll give your kids half cups."  So I only had to pay $6. I appreciated that. 

Here's Lydia. 

And here's Charlotte. 

And here's Derrick and Veronica. 

There was a tide pool display next to the birds.  The kids loved playing with that. There was a big star fish in there that was really cool to touch. 

We realized we'd missed a whole area so we went back there.  This touch pool had little rays and little sharks.  (Derrick could tell you their actual names if he was here.  He knows so much about fish.)

Here's Lydia posing with the sharks. 

I liked this display of corral and shells. 

There were some cool glow in the dark anemones back here. And a crab that looked like a grumpy rock. 

This pool was made in a boat and had coy fish.

Here are me and Brandon taking a break by the grouper tank. This was one of the few places to sit. 

There were also some reptiles. 

Derrick liked all the fish in this tank.

Lydia finally got brave enough to let the fish suck on her hands. 

You can see Veronica doing it too. I tried it and it was weird.

Charlotte with the grouper. 

We stayed at the Aquarium for 2 hours.  Derrick probably could have stayed there all day. But I think he was getting close to actually jumping in the tanks with the fish. 

We left the aquarium and went to a park.  We ate the rest of our snacks and the kids played on the playground. Then we got in the car and drove home. 

We'd enjoyed our little trip a lot. Derrick keeps saying he wants to go back to Boise soon. I keep telling him that we'll go back in the summer and go to a water park. 

When we got home Brandon made dinner and then we all watched the Amazing Spiderman 2. I'd never seen this movie before. When it came out Brandon was in Korea. I knew how the storyline for the movie was going to go and I just didn't want that in my life while Brandon was gone. So I avoided it. And then I just never watched it later. 

But I also knew that this movie was important - especially if the kids wanted to appreciate certain moments in Far From Home. And so it was finally time to watch it. I told the kids that it was going to end sad and they were all like, "Yeah, we know Gwen dies."  I'm not sure if I told them that earlier or if they figured it out from Spider Gwen in spiderverse, but either way I'm glad it wasn't a shock to them. 

When the movie was over the kids were like, "So next we watch Amazing Spiderman 3 right?"  And I was like, "Nope and here's why."  Then I spent like 10 minutes explaining the corporate machinations between Sony and Marvel and how Amazing 3 was scraped when Spiderman joined the Avengers. This was complete with drawing on our whiteboard to illustrate everything. Yep, I'm kind of a nerd. 

Anyway, that brings us to Wednesday night which was the halfway point of our Spring Break.  We'll talk about Part 2 - The Garage in the next post.  

Thanks for reading.